First, I should say that I am using an older laptop, running Linux. I bought it from Free Geek in 2019 for $120, and at that time it was probably already years old. It has served me faithfully. Just recently, however, I have been noticing problems, sometimes that affect my web browser, Chromium, and sometimes that affect my media player, VLC.

When my laptop has been working too much and too fast, because of either excessive scripting on a webpage, or about a half hour into playing a DVD, things start slowing down. I've learned the reason for this: the processor is getting physically hotter, and so the Linux kernel actually starts a special task that...does nothing. It is called kidle_inject and it just stops my processor from doing anything, spacing out tasks so the processor doesn't physically injure itself. So what this means is that when I am watching a DVD, it works fine for a while, and then starts lagging, pixelating or dropping frames. Since it is caused by…

It seems the definition of hard science fiction is more elastic than I thought. This book, by Vernor Vinge is supposed to be hard sci-fi. What I got from it was more space operaish because there was little nuance - the good guys are good because they are good and the bad guys are bad because they are bad; there was also a love/hate relationship a la Mills and Boon, except without the hot makeup sex. Also, for a story purporting to be hard sci-fi, it assumed that beings originating from…

he walks

with his hands on his head

he walks

easy and slow

and he walks

I watch and I wonder

what piece of the heart

let him do what he did

his name is Kyle

his T-shirt is green

he looks like a Kyle

he wears sneakers and jeans

he walks

he walks toward police

he walks like a boy

with popcorn and Coke

going back to his seat…