Recent Comments

I think he means adding a link that says "Parent" somewhere close to the one saying "Reply". If this/my comment had such a link it would point to your comment https://pipedot.org/2WXS and so on.

I think he was looking for a link on a comment that would bring the user to the comment that it was in reply to. Looking at the situation now, it looks like clicking on the comment link isolates the conversation and shows the parent as would be expected by a parent link.

That's really good, and makes a lot of sense, but I think its one of those things that is so good, people are missing the worse solution because it was more familiar and discoverable.

Same here and I also want to add my congratulations.

Slashdot dropped the ball. Pipedot and Soylent News and others picked it up. You and we are all far ahead of the times: all other sites and communities have either diasterous comment fields or outdated forums. Both kinds would be wastly improved by the various directions SN and Pipedot have taken and keep exploring.

So for any improvements or further challenges maybe it could be interesting to generalize further into replacing such comment fields and forums. For a comment fields version it might include removing a lot of the superstructure and mainly using the commenting part, and for a forums version it would probably involve a different kind of front page much more akin to ordinary forum front indexes and subforum indexes where topics are pushed up front with new comments.

There is also blogging of course. It could be interesting to set up a personal blog based on pipecode but 1. I don't have time, 2. I don't have content, and 3. I could already use Pipedot and SN journals for it.

Just throwing a few thoughts out there in case anyone finds it interesting.

Thank you for all the work that has been done, it is impressive.

This is one of the best designed news websites I have ever had the good fortune to lay my eyes upon. The visual styling is impeccable, the formatting kind and easy to read and digest. Our only issue now is content generation. I have issues generating content when my main news sites are aggregates instead of sources. It looks like as of now we have more readers than writers. Content is our biggest challenge as a community.

Seconded. |. is a beauty. And it still remains so with javascript disabled.

Not entirely sure what you mean by parent links. Does it mean adding the target attribute to links?

<a href="/" target="_parent">Some link</a>

This would be one of those "frame-buster" type constructs, but since there are no framesets or iframes on this site, when is this useful?

Also: built-in spell checking, inclusive of titles.

+1.

You know what this site is missing that slashdot used to have? UserId based eliteness. What do we have here some numbers and letters? How are we supposed to know who's an wise grey beard, and who's a skript kiddie?

Again, this is mostly satire, not intended to be taken seriously.

I've been lurking a lot, but I wanted to pop in and offer congratulations. The sites come a long way. Keep up the great work.

That reasoning may apply to keystrokes, but it definitely does not apply to audio recordings. Not everything that is on audio is meant for that computer. What if you get a phone call during your tests, and talk about confidential stuff on the phone?

ITYM exhibitionist. Voyeuristic are those watching.

Parent links.

Is that it reminds me of substance D.

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You've made a better technical version of slashdot was. I think the biggest problem with this site has nothing to do with the code. I think we as the community ( Myself included) need to do a better job of submitting stories. Considering I've submitted zero, I think I need to get on that...

I would like to get email notifications what someone answers me to my posts. Apart from that I am quite happy with the site. ...so it is about time to make it worse. ;-)

The little site that could. Congrats Brian. Your news site is awesome and just keeps getting better.
Any chance of having the plain text editor convert LF to < BR > automatically?

You're right, looking up the numbers now, I see butane, propane, and wood all in the same order of magnitude for CO2 emissions, which is not what we're directly talking about here. However, there are wood heaters that beat those numbers by a large margin, as those are aggregate numbers, not best-of numbers (the same is of course true for propane, butane, natural gas, etc). I tend to agree mostly with another poster that suggested burning wood in a power plant instead. Capturing emissions is much easier at scale (if not cheaper), and wood is CO2 neutral in the long run. As far as climate change is concerned, wood is great on so many levels. As far as me, and other asthmatics go, wood needs to go for all but a very small population that relies on it as the sole source of heat.

it is possible to operate a wood burning heater that produces less emissions than a propane or butane heater

How's that? The summary mentions the best EPA-certified wood stoves emit 60 times as much as natural gas (presumably propane is similar), and other stoves do worse.

A "butane" heater is new to me, though there are butane stoves. Perhaps you meant natural gas? See above...

Utahn here, and yes, I believe that Utahns believe that Utah is a nanny state, mostly because of things like their current ban on wood burning stoves. There are something like 12 homes in Utah (that the government is aware of) that rely solely on wood to heat the house because it's illegal to give/get a mortgage on a home, new or not, that doesn't have a proper heater. The problem I have with the ban it is possible to operate a wood burning heater that produces less emissions than a propane or butane heater; both of which are entirely legal (and horrendously expensive to operate). I think wood should remain an option for heating your house as long as it is a heater that produces very little emissions. Burning wood for the romanticism? Sorry; fuck you. I have to breath the air you are polluting. It's for the greater good, so fuck off.

All of that said, Utah is a nanny state in so many more ways. For example: you can't buy liquor at the grocery store. In many cities you can't buy beer (which here is very much near-beer because the alcohol content is so low) on Sunday. If that's not the state being a nanny, I don't know what is.

My favorite part? Utahns are so very much in favor of some nanny-state laws and so much against others. If it's something they don't agree with (and Utah mormons in particular are a very cohesive voting bloc) then it should be banned. It makes for very entertaining political theater. (Another favorite is things like politicians saying, just the other day, that it's okay to rape your wife if she's asleep; seriously Utah wtf?)

Starting to wonder if I'm a milk sommelier. Some people really can't tell the difference between two buck chuck and a superb vintage, I wonder If I just have a crazy milk discerning palate. I guess that's what happens when your baby sitters are dairy farmers.

Oh, they do. Not nearly in the volume that they do in other countries. I HATE UHT milk, with a real passion. Its terrible taste and texture compared with fresh normal temperature pasteurized milk. If you think I'm just crazy, try making cheese out of UHT milk .. you can't the proteins are all messed up. It won't come together to make a solid curd.

As the outside temperature approaches -18 C (0 F), the energy requirement approaches that of the much simpler electric resistance heater

Actually, heat-pumps have been getting redesigned in recent years specifically to operate much more efficiently in cold climates. I was surprised to see how quickly they arrived on the market, myself, but they are out there.

Not sure what the best available is right now, but I was recently looking at Mitsubishi's "Hyper Heat" systems which offer "full heating capacity at 5° F [-15C] outdoor ambient" and continue "operation down to -13° F [-25C] outdoor" temperatures, at pretty good efficiency levels.

Geothermal-sinked heat pumps are much better

Yes, but the installation cost is many, many times higher, requires permitting, simply isn't viable in a large number of installation scenarios, and more. It's a superb method for extremely cold climates, but really not worth the cost in milder ones, particularly as air-source heat pumps improve.

Customary outside-air-sinked heat pumps are no good when you REALLY NEED heating. As the outside temperature approaches -18 C (0 F), the energy requirement approaches that of the much simpler electric resistance heater.

Geothermal-sinked heat pumps are much better, as a sink temperature of +10 or so is almost never more than a few feet underground. The tradeoff is cost and complexity.

Rivals include the Arduino...

I would not say that Arduiuno is a rival. The popularity of Arduiuno and RasPi may be similar but they are two different worlds, you are comparing "microcontrollers" and "computers".

For example:
Ardiuno is based on a microcontroller, there is no "real" OS apart from some specialised microcontroller OS' like RTOS. Apart from Due (84MHz) all other MCUs are 16MHz or slower. RAM and internal flash memory is in the order of KB.

On the other hand all other boards you listed are running proper OS (linux/windows), all have frequencies in the range of 1GHz, RAM is external and is in the order of GB. Memory is usually on a separate chip from the CPU, for example on memory cards or eMMC flash.

LOL I'm already there, more if you count the 3 Android phones. I got the Phenom II X6 for gaming, the wife has the Phenom II X4 for her gaming, got an older C2Q I use for an A/V renderbox, then there is the E350 netbook for me, the C2D lappy for the wife, horsepower ain't lacking here LOL!

And yet, all I am thinking is: maybe the previous model is getting cheaper now!

Definitly agree with the crazy part after all the times I spent scraping just to have something that qualified as a computer. I am really looking foward to the future though where everyone can have some sort of computer. Small computers everywhere maybe five in a house, a bit pie in the sky but I love the idea.

You misunderstand. The freezing is for extra structural strength. Milk crates are needed because the containers aren't strong enough to support the weight of several more rows of containers on top of them. Freezing turns the milk itself into extra structure that will support the weight, without the need for milk crates or similar, reducing shipping weight and volume.

People buy what they are used to. We are creatures of habit.

Around here, milk comes in unrefrigerated cardboard cartons, and it has an unopened shelf life of months. No need to freeze it for shipping, just pile crates and crates onto a truck and take 'em. Why don't they have that kinda milk in the USA?

Did you just call *Utah* a "nanny state"?! Utah, where they want to go against Federal law and eliminate the public education system, because it smells too much like socialism:

http://www.mintpressnews.com/utah-aaron-osmond-against-mandatory-universal-education/165597/

So, what happened to all of those "Split Wood Not Atoms" bumperstickers from the 80s?

Oh lord here comes the bullshit, for those that care here are the facts...FACT its an ALPHA BUILD that is designed to catch bugs and let MSFT see what people like and use and what people avoid so they don't make another Windows Mist8ke Edition, it is NOT designed for daily use, THAT would be the Consumer Preview due in a couple months, okay? FACT it says quite clearly in the very large print EULA that you see upon installation EXACTLY what they are logging and again the WHY they are logging it, and as for the audio logging are you REALLY that out of the loop? One word......CORTANA! For those that do not know Windows 10 will come with Cortana which is a VOICE ACTIVATED assistant similar to Siri. Because she is voice activated there is plenty of things about your average audio they need to know like 1.- What level is the average background noise, 2.- what level most like their music at, 3.- What is a good level for Cortana as far as mikes go, 4.- How hot the average laptop or desktop mike is so they can have a safe level, and so on. This is common sense folks, gonna use voice commands? you gotta know this shit.

I urge the non tinfoil hatters to give it a go, I have it running on the weakest thing I currently have (I believe in testing an OS on weak hardware as if it runs good there? It'll run that much better with more resources) which is an AMD E350 netbook with 8GB of RAM and a 5400RPM 320GB drive. On Win 7 while it was okay once everything loaded getting it to that point was slllllooooowwwww as Xmas, Windows 10? WWWOOOOOOO HOOOOO BABY YEAH this baby boots nearly as fast as my hexacore desktop! Its punchy, responsive, hell I've used stripped down gamer builds of XP and 7 that wasn't THIS fast and responsive, its fricking great and that is with all the drivers running in compatibility mode!

Well more folks are gonna have to get out the word, simple as that. I started on Soylent but frankly they are swinging farther left than Slash and when its coming from a socialist commie pinko like me? You KNOW its too damned far left! That is what happens when you end up with a couple of Social Justice Warriors in positions of power, it ALWAYS comes down to political agendas and pushing their beliefs...I swear SJWs are worse than fricking Scientologists! this site seems a lot more like what those of us escaping Slash wanting but there really needs to be more getting out of the word, hell I wouldn't have even known this existed if a Soylent poster wouldn't have mentioned it...maybe somebody should contact the sites beyond and try to get pipe listed?

While I don't have the strength ATM to crank out a bunch of articles (had to have a wisdom tooth extracted via surgery as it was wrapped around a major nerve, needless to say OOOOWWWWW!) what I CAN do to help out Pipedot is let the guys here in on a little secret on having tons of timely articles IF you want this site to be actually about tech as opposed to political BS. Just go to Dailyrotation and Freshnews, these two feeds will give you dozens of timely relevant articles to choose from in everything from science to OSes, hardware to networking, just grab a handful of those and spend 20 minutes whipping up a summary and tada! Instant relevant news. Again I'll be happy to help when I'm not going "OOOOWWWWW son of a bitch!" or being woozy from painkillers but until then it'll be an easy way to keep the line a rolling.

Don't you just looove how they can just ban anything they want while costing them nothing? If they want to ban something as expensive they should not be allowed to unless THEY come up with the money in the budget to pay for the replacements! I don't know about everybody else but I'm personally getting sick and fucking tired of nanny state shitters telling what I can eat, breathe, listen to, watch...how about a nice cup of STFU and leave people alone?

Its just fricking CRAZY how cheap hardware is getting! You can grab a quad ARM board like this for $35, buy nice dual tablets for $50, heck you can grab a new dual core AMD AM1 APU that makes a kickass HTPC, $60 for a dual or $80 for a fricking quad, its just crazy! I hope everybody simply takes a moment to marvel at how well we have it hardware wise, never in history has such insane amounts of power been so affordable, enjoy!

I think I've identified what the problem is.

Yes, the fat and water freezes at different temperatures, but once fully thawed they mix together and the taste is indistinguishable. Maybe that's only true of homogenized milk? Haven't tried it with non-homogenized.

Transporting an item that's far below its target temperature is considerably cheaper... The train cars or truck trailers don't need active refrigeration system, as it'll take at least a couple days to thaw out, and should be at its destination long before then. The volume increases by a small amount, but eliminating the need for extra structure (like milk crates) should save even more space, and most importantly, weight.

My family went full on powdered milk for years. I avoided milk for years. Skipped breakfast for years. Avoided hot drinks. Only drank flavoured milk from the school canteen sometimes. I hate powdered milk.

Wouldn't freezing cause the water and milk solids to separate? Could also change the taste. Also, would frozen items be more costly and difficult to transport than chilled items?

I don't know, I can only speak from my experiences, and they've all been horrible with unfrozen milk and great with full fat powdered milk.

With powdered milk, you have to make sure you get full fat powdered milk. Most of the stores in the US only sell skim powdered milk, which is terrible. Most of the time you need to go to a specialty ethnic store to get the full fat powder.

The solution is quite easy... Burn the wood in the electrical generating plants. That'll quickly fix both problems.

Also, heat pumps only require 1/3rd to 1/4th the electric of basic resistive heaters, and better units can operate down to air temperatures below NZ's lowest ever recorded. A ductless mini split or a PTAC heat pumps can be had for under $700, and the majority of the installation can be done by an average homeowner, with the pros doing the final hook-ups. Just check the specs for minimum temperature before buying, as some are much better than others.

Wood is really cheap, and electricity is really expensive ($0.20/kWh in New Zealand, where incomes are really low).

If you've got a way to reverse those issues, you'll be onto something.

Actually, I freeze milk all the time to give it several weeks of extra shelf-life, and it comes out tasting exactly the same as fresh. Only complaints I've heard are when people don't let it thaw entirely, and instead end up with a glass full of thick cream at the start, and basically just white-colored water later.

I despise the taste of powdered milk... Thinner than skim milk, with a spoiled rotten milk flavor and smell that's impossible to eliminate. Even freeze-drying results in the same terrible product. And even worse, it's really not any cheaper than the real, fresh stuff, probably due to the energy cost of the dehydrating process.

Oh man, I would go out of my way to buy never frozen milk, if that should ever become common place. I don't know why, but when it unfreezes it doesn't look or taste the same. Seriously, I'd rather have powdered milk. Speaking of which, why not just powder all milk? Take the weight and volume of water out shipping, easy to contain.

Nice overview, but no answers.

Actually, it answers the question:

disposable plastic pouches > refillable plastic jugs > refillable glass > disposable plastic jugs > disposable paper cartons > disposable glass

I admit, "aluminum" is missing from the list, but it would likely fall second to last.

I only wonder why they don't freeze milk solid for shipping, so it can be stacked in its flimsy plastic jugs without requiring the added weight and support of milk crates.

Nice overview, but no answers. Thanks for the link.

Ubuntu = systemd = no