Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Important man finds out people steal cars.


Video of Doug Ford upset because somebody tried to steal his car out of his driveway. Just like hundreds and hundreds of other people have had their cars stolen over the last few years out of their driveways.

I just can't pass this by without comment, it is too egregious. Everything is just fine, nobody should rock the boat, until the Premiere's car gets jacked. 

That's different.

Monday, May 12, 2025

Finally, something worth posting about. New hard drive technology!

 At last, something nice to post about. Western Digital buys company developing ceramic hard drive technology.

 Ground-breaking ceramic-based data storage outfit Cerabyte has today announced it has received strategic investment from Western Digital, a move it says will accelerate the development of its ceramic data storage tech.

Cerabyte is a German company seeking to revolutionize data storage. It uses ceramic-on-glass material that the company says is good for 5,000 years of data storage.

Not only is Cerabyte's revolutionary tech designed to be essentially permanent, but it could also pave the way for data storage capacities on a scale hitherto unfathomable – Cerabyte says its next-generation active archives combine multiple storage technologies as we head towards the Yottabite era.

They're boasting that they may be able to get the price down to $1 per terabyte, which would be amazing. But to me the really good part is the durability. Bit-rot is the huge problem nobody has an answer for these days. Five thousand year ceramic storage? Sign me up!

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Happy Easter!


 
 
Salutations and greetings to all from Chez Phantom on Easter Sunday. A fine day to reflect upon our blessings. Hope the bunny was generous too. ~:D

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Another new book! Secret Empire

Secret Empire cover

 

 George McIntyre's troubles are not over, as he and Ginny must learn to get along with their numerous Valkyries and robot girlfriends. And the police, who are reluctant to cooperate. Jimmy Carlson and Kim Park solve the Alcubierre warp bubble puzzle, creating a whole new world of possibilities for trouble. Leading Jimmy to ask Enrico Fermi's famous question: where is everybody?

Follow George and the Angels as they rescue wild Toasters and find hints of mysterious spacecraft flying past Barnard's Star.

 

Warning, this book contains Valkyries making fun of the cops, dragons racing mecha suits on the front lawn of Parliament, a giant dog, giant spiders, giant tanks, giants in short skirts, and an airshow.

You have been warned. 

Link to Canadian Amazon site.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

New book! Angels Incorporated.

 Edward Thomas has been at it again, there's a new book to announce!


 

Angels Incorporated by Edward Thomas

After a long hiatus, Angels' Incorporated is finally here!

 George McIntyre thought his troubles were over, and he'd live happily ever after with Ginny, Charlotte and Brunhilde. Unfortunately the world doesn't work that way, and new challenges have arrived to test him and the robots of Angels Incorporated. Mr. Bill is still out there making zombies, and new indications are found that there could be more than one alien Toaster on Earth. Possibly one that is older than the Pyramids.

Join George and the Angels to uncover the truth, and defeat the zombie threat once and for all!

Link to Canadian Amazon store.

Monday, January 20, 2025

Congratulations, America.

 
Buckle up, squirrel murderers. New sheriff in town.

 
It's a sunny day here at Chez Phantom in Ontario, Canada. A good day to congratulate my American friends and neighbors on having thrown off the yoke of fascism that was the Biden administration.

As the next few days unfold, I expect we will learn of many new and dire crimes perpetrated against the American people by "The Powers That Have Been" up until today.

Today, those criminals feel the Hand of Righteousness on their shoulders. 

So, it is a good day. Enjoy, my friends!

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

Happy New Year!

 Happy New Year everyone!


Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Thank God.

 
It was a real nail biter.

#OrangeManBad beat the steal in an historic win. I am so relieved I can't even tell you.

Next up, Canada throws off the Chinese Communist yoke and ditches the #ShinyPony. Incoming in 3, 2, ...

Looking north, toward Ottawa...


Wednesday, September 11, 2024

9/11

 

The one guy fighting for those who died on 9/11.


Wednesday, September 04, 2024

NaNoWriMo loves AI tools? Are you kidding me?

Actual robot, actually writing.

NaNoWriMo is in the news again, and not in a good way. Again.

The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist."

Not content to rest on their child-grooming laurels, NaNoWriMo has decided to piss off the writing community more by not only allowing AI tools to be used but releasing a statement that not allowing AI tools is double-plus ungood. From their statement:

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 
  • Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.
  • Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers "should" be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help. 
  • General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.
Now, leaving aside the leftist balderdash about "upfront cost burdens" and "abelism" (which I'm sorry Lefties is not a freaking word), the oh-so-moral people at NaNoWriMostudiously ignore the sad truth that getting ChatGPT to barf out a bunch of paragraphs for you is not writing.
NaNo is supposed to be a writing contest. Where you -write-.

Arguably AI is techno-assisted plagiarism, and I do not appreciate the various tech companies scraping my books on Amazon for fodder to feed their large language models. Given AIs are used in professional environments to make money, I'd appreciate a tiny pittance of recompense for my contribution to their profits, thank you very much. Absent them paying me for what I've done, I'm against it. Because it's stealing. For the Leftists out there who need things spelled out, stealing is bad.

Apart from the unpaid plagiarism, given the realities of publishing these days I'm not against the use of AI tools in a professional environment. You need fast research, you need 1500 words about corsets and you know you'll never get more than ten bucks for it, AI is your friend. You need a book cover and you know your book is never going to make more than a hundred bucks, Photoshop and AI generative fill all the way, baby. Money is money. I use it for covers, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But for a writing contest? This is the same thing as using an e-bike in a bicycle race vs. riding it to work. Fine, it isn't against the rules, but did you really compete? Or did the bike compete and you just sat on it and waved to the spectators? A stupid concept, in my humble opinion, and I speculate that it could be cover for some financial kickback or other skulduggery. A pox upon them, and all their houses.

For the Usual Suspects, this is a different issue than the ridiculous conduct of the Dragon Awards. You can't ret-con rules and quietly disqualify nominees because somebody made a fuss about AI, and most particularly you can't do it under cover of darkness, by stealth. One of these things is not like the other, you Commie pukes.

Sunday, July 14, 2024

Day after: questions.

Yesterday, as we all know by now, one 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, PA missed killing Donald Trump by maybe a quarter inch. Given what we've seen from the videos, and there's a literal photo of the bullet flying past him, another quarter inch to the left would have killed him. No need to go into gory details, I'll just leave it at that.

Leaving us all with some questions.

My first question, at what point does official incompetence become something more sinister? We already know eye-witnesses told police Crooks was on that roof easily two to three minutes before he took the shot. We already have pictures of him lying there lining up his shot, being given all the time in the world, only 150yards from the podium. How is that reasonable? Are they really that lame?

No, they're not. This is a special case, IMHO sitting here behind my keyboard with my gatorade. They can't be that lame by accident, is my thought. Somebody degraded Trump's Secret Service detail, and somebody did a bunch of site planning to get Crooks on that roof. He didn't stumble on the idea while driving by with a ladder and a rifle in his truck. Maybe Crooks planned it himself, but does that seem likely?

My second question, at what point do we all admit that this is a Leftist political policy? They've been demonizing Trump since 2016, they did it to Bush Sr. and Jr., they did it to Regan. The media has been trying to brainwash Thomas Matthew Crooks and every other 20 year old in the country SINCE THE 1980s!!!! And now here we are. There's a bunch more like him out there, primed and ready to pop. All you have to do is watch tiktok today, they're screaming it. Hundreds of them. It's a fucking social movement by now, not a lone-wolf deal.

Final question, well, you missed boys. What's next? Whatcha gonna do? Send some more useful idiots to whack the Republican presidential nominee? Release the hounds to burn some cars? I don't think you're winning this time. Joke's over.

Fire up the corporate jets and flee, is my advice. Cuba is nice, or so I hear. Decent beaches, right? Di di mau, baby.

Uppitydate: Here we are on the 17th, and it seems the shooter was fucking around with that rifle on the roof for quite some time in plain view of everybody. I heard one estimate that it was over 20 minutes. Certainly more than five.

What this means is that Trump's security detail LEFT HIM OUT THERE for a long time when they could plainly see a guy on that roof where he was not supposed to be. Okay, they didn't want to shoot the guy, but they couldn't get Trump off the stage? Shooter on the roof, in plain fucking sight, of everybody, and they left their guy standing on the stage like a perfect target?

There was time for a cop to RUN over to Trump and get him off the stage. Like, lots of time. Time for a coffee and a donut, and the fat guy could still run over.

Just looking at that, I'm going to say that somebody needs to go to jail here. Starting with the site commander, and whoever gave that moron the job.

Saturday, July 13, 2024

from the "Military Intelligence is a contradiction" files: German Navy seeks replacement for 8" floppy drives.

In case anyone ever wonders how bad tempered, militant, conservative-minded, traditionalist Phantom came to hate the Canadian military at age 17, and continues to hold the world-wide military as a whole in contempt to this day, an example.

The German Navy is searching for a new storage system to replace the aging 8-inch (20cm) floppy disks which are vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates. According to an official tender document, the ideal answer to the German Navy's problems would be a drop-in floppy disk replacement based upon a storage emulation system, reports Golem.de. Germany's Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates' data acquisition system and, thus "central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation," according to the source report.

A tiny bit of background for those of you under 60, the eight inch floppy disk (8") was current computer technology in the 1970s. Introduced for mini-computers in 1971 by IBM, carried 500K of data, and it was popular. Eventually discontinued in favor of the 5.25" and later the 3-1/2", by the 1980s just in time for PCs. Here's a website that some guy put up about playing with 8" drives.

So the German fricking navy standardized on 8" floppies in the late 1970s and never changed it for 50 years? Oh no. It is -much- worse than that.

Germany's Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates' data acquisition system and, thus "central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation," according to the source report.

Their frigates were built in the 1990s with tech from the 1970s that was already wildly, horribly obsolete. For which spare parts have not been made for 30 years, because they were already past end-of-life when the ship was built. Every computer on that boat, taken together, could be replaced with a single Apple iWatch. You could run the whole thing from your phone, and still be able to watch cat videos on YouTube.

But the worst part is that for-sure the engineers all knew that very well when the thing was built, and they fucking well did it anyway.

Later in the article it is revealed that the American Strategic Air Command system ran on 8" floppies until they finally fixed it in 2019. You know, the guys that babysit the nukes? Yeah.

I can only imagine the shit that's lurking in the Canadian military, still running on IBM and DEC big iron boxes from the 1970s.

And that, my friends, is why I hold the Western military as a whole in contempt. They are lazy, short-sighted, corrupt, and above all, they are stupid. I can only imagine the freak show that the Chinese and Russian military is.

Friday, June 28, 2024

Trump/#Brandon debate in a nutshell.

 https://x.com/JerseyBillz/status/1806513100834656286

Dana Bash signals #Brandon who he should be looking at. That's the most perfect encapsulation of this wretched farce I've seen. 

I am beyond disgusted today. This plastic banana has been propped up in that office since 2020. What the actual fuck.

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

IT HAS BEGUN.


The blazing red Liberal riding of Toronto-St. Paul, the very heart of darkness, housing the absolute highest concentration of the absolute dumbest fucktard Liberals in the entire nation... is now a Conservative seat.

The Normies have awoken.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Bro was out in 8 hours on $2,500 bail.

Just in case you were wondering what's going on in the Greater Toronto Area, here's a sample.


Bro was irritated, it seems.

Long story short, bro was slashing at the guy with the camera, with a knife. Took several good swipes, stabbing grip. The video went viral, and bro got nabbed by the cops. Red shirt guy also arrested, also released.

And then released on a $2,500 bond, yes you read that right two thousand five hundred, the same day.

Also, Mr. Slashy there has TWO PREVIOUS BONDS against him, this was not his first rodeo.

Okay? That's what's up, Canada. Just thought you ought to know.

Friday, April 26, 2024

Here's what's wrong with Canada. I know you were wondering.

If you want to know what's wrong with Canada, I've got the whole thing in a nutshell right here.

Canadian systems builder 45 Drives is perhaps best known for the dense multi-drive storage systems employed by the likes of Backblaze and others, but over the last year the biz has expanded its line-up to virtualization kit, and now low-power clients and workstations aimed at enterprises and home enthusiasts alike. 45 Drives' Home Client marks a departure from the relatively large rack-mount chassis it normally builds. Founder Doug Milburn told The Register the mini PC is something of a passion project that was born out of a desire to build a better home theater PC.

Housed within a custom passively cooled chassis built in-house by 45 Drive's parent company Protocase, is a quad-core, non-hyperthreaded Intel Alder Lake-generation N97 processor capable of boosting to 3.6GHz, your choice of either 8GB or 16GB of memory, and 250GB of flash storage. The decision to go with a 12-gen N-series was motivated in part by 45 Drives' internal workloads, Milburn explains, adding that to run PowerPoint or Salesforce just doesn't require that much horsepower. However, 45 Drives doesn't just see this as a low-power PC. Despite its name, the box will be sold under both its enterprise and home brands. In home lab environments, these small form factor x86 and Arm PCs have become incredibly popular for everything from lightweight virtualization and container hosts to firewalls and routers.

Here's an example of Home Client, their really sweet home theatre/NAS/router appliance.

The Home Client is a Linux-based, small-form-factor personal computer by 45HomeLab (not primarily a storage device).
 
The Home Client is a single-board-computer-based device, with a pre-installed Linux operating system. It has an extremely small footprint, making it perfect to stick on a TV stand or fit onto a desk. It is fanless, so it will remain quiet and unobtrusive while staying in a sleek, small-form-factor low profile.The Home Client is built in North America with an aerospace-grade aluminum milled chassis.
 
We see the Home Client as functioning best in virtualized environments, where it can stream applications from your lab. It can also be great for light office work, streaming, and other similar applications. But it is completely open, so it is up to you to make whatever use of it that fits best into your home environment.

Very nice indeed. Canadian made, by (one presumes) Canadians.

The problem? It's $800 bucks. Competing single-board, low power competitors? The first one I looked up with the same motherboard, ~$200 bucks. I'm sure there are many more that are cheaper.

There you go. Not double the price. FOUR TIMES the price.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what's wrong with Canada.

Oh, and why is it four times the price? Because regulation, tax, tax, tax, tax and tax, and also every input from labor to fuel to electricity is four times higher than it ought to be because of regulation, tax, tax, tax, tax and tax,and of course real estate costs. Which are much more than 4x what it ought to be.

Prediction, nobody is going to pay $800 bucks for a $200 headless compute appliance. They're just not going to do it. Except the government. If they make friends in the Liberal Party, government offices might standardize on these things and then 45 Drives might very well make some money on this thing.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

And now, a knife license. In Calgary, no less.

We used to make this knife license joke 30 years ago every time somebody said "gun license." I blame us for that, we couldn't understand we weren't dealing with rational human beings.


From the article, their "reasoning."

"What's happening here is very alarming," said Ashley Salvador, councillor for Ward Métis during an urban planning committee meeting on Tuesday."As we heard today, you walk in, and right next to the chocolate bars is a wall of knives that are designed for harm," said Ashley Salvador, councillor for Ward Métis.

Because "a wall of knives that are designed for harm" needs a picture to go with it.

 

And...

Bryan LaFleche, president of Crystal Kids Youth Centre also spoke at the meeting to express how prevalent knives, as well UnWTas brass knuckles and bear spray have become amongst the kids at the centre, which they have to confiscate regularly. "When we ask them: 'Why are you carrying a knife? Why are you carrying bear spray?' The answer every single time is 'it's for protection'," LaFleche told the committee. "Our great fear with that is when an 11-year-old child pulls a six-inch knife out of his knapsack and says 'I need this for protection,' we spend hours trying to convince them that that knife affords them absolutely no protection."
 
It's funny how kids can tell when they're being lied to, eh?
 
Then in literally the next breath:

Allan Bolstad with the Alberta Avenue Community League purchased several knives at a convenience store on 118th Avenue to present the committee with a slideshow illustrating the intended purpose of the knives being sold. "When you hold these knives, when you actually have them in your hand, you realize how lethal that they are, and that they're designed for one thing and that's for hurting someone badly, or killing someone," said Bolstad.  "These aren't for buttering toast. They're for trying to kill someone." Bolstad suggested the city create a separate business licence for stores looking to sell   knives, akin to the one currently in place for selling firearms.

So, depending which side of their mouths they're talking out of, either a knife provides "absolutely no protection" or they are "lethal." Palpably lethal, according to Mr. Allan Bolstad. You just pick it up and you can feeeeeel how it was made to kill somebody.

Here's a picture of Mr. Allan Bolstad. Scroll all the way down to the bottom. As it says in the article, he'd also like to license builders and so forth. Because nothing on this Earth should be allowed to move or sit still without a license. You can see how he looks like the kind of guy who would think something like that. 
 
Here's another one, with him posing heroically in front of what was probably a business once, driven under by socialists.
 
Mr. Bolstad, keeping weed-grown lots vacant in Alberta!


Because there oughta be a law. Right? Keep them lots vacant, Allan.

Saturday, April 13, 2024

Real-life "chemtrails".

 Once again, one of those gap-tooth hillbilly redneck tinfoil hat nutter conspiracies... is actually being done.

 

Remember when we thought this was fake?

 Aboard the deck of a World War II-era aircraft carrier, University of Washington scientists flicked the switch on a glorified snow-making machine," reports the Seattle Times. They describe the scientists "blasting a plume of saline spray off the coast of Alameda, California... trying to perfect a shot of salty particles that would make clouds better at reflecting sunlight back toward space, and help cool the Earth.

"It's called marine cloud brightening." Compressed air was pumped at hundreds of pounds per square inch through a nozzle full of a salty mix with a similar composition to seawater housed in an apparatus similar to a snow-making machine. The New York Times reported the machine produced a deafening hiss, releasing a fine mist that traveled hundreds of feet through the air. The scientists wanted to see if the machine could generate a consistent spray of the right size salt aerosols, taking samples downwind with instruments mounted on scissor lifts, commonly used in construction.
"This study is not yet large enough to affect local weather," the article points out. Yet "the idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," reported the New York Times.

 Yes, real-life chemtrails, that fruitbat crazy conspiracy theory from the 90s.

Done in secret, no less.

So now I need to go back and reconsider laughing at David Icke and his lizard people.