dtcwee: The Value of Nothing

To aid division of assets under Australian Family Law. There are many resources to aid understanding of the property division/settlement process, the SA Law Handbook comes to mind, but few help with the calculations or how they map onto various elements in the court forms. As a result, parties risk negotiating without a clear idea of the assets in play, or how the division can be achieved. Closer to finalisation, the draft orders may be difficult to understand. After finalisation a poorly communicated division may lead parties to convince themselves that it was unfair.  So here's a Google Sheet: Family Law - Property Division Calculator (AU)   ... to help people reconceptualize the negotiations. It is, of course, free and you don't need to create a login (unlike some other online aids.)

...so that your web-based Linux admin app gets auto-updates. You probably already know this, but Webmin is a web front-end for administering Linux systems. It really shines when you can't use a graphical user interface, e.g. when your system is 'headless', i.e. not connected to a display, and/or you don't want to use a remote command line.

Versus robots. "No! Demo-GRAPH-y!" The flood of low cost Chinese labour will ebb, according to Goodhart and Pradhan in "The Great Demographic Reversal", leading to: higher inflation. manufacturing elsewhere becoming more competitive. ( un-paywalled from Nikkei Shimbun ) Apparently good news for those in developed nations who have long clamoured for fair prices and fair wages, and who blame globalisation for undercutting them. But when? And for how long? Well, not right now . China labour costs are stagnant, not rising. source: tradingeconomics.com Even as China's working age population loses 5 million a year, assuming the baseline scenario. (Source: Reserve Bank of Australia .) One may scoff at the suggestion that these lost workers could be - or are being - replaced with robots or other automation, such as AI. Robots have been around for decades but opinion on how they impact workers vary, from ' a little ' to 'responsible for  50-70% of i

Problem: Samba shares do not appear in Windows File/Network Explorer. Cause: Because of 2017 ransomware, Windows stopped supporting the SMB1 protocol - the primary way Samba hosts are discovered on the network. Samba developers are not going fix  it. If, like me, you've found your Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) file server suddenly invisible, solutions follow.

Don't sweat the big stuff. Like a lot of people right about now, I got drawn into some tribal debates. COVID-19, Racial Justice, Climate Change. Fun stuff. Lots of heat and noise. Maybe it's one of my mental patterns, but they leave me feeling like I'm the only one out there holding up a cocktail umbrella to a tsunami of reasoning. I don't intend to denigrate my opponents. A lot of what they say is logical, if often cherry-picked, one-sided, and beside the point. There's just ... a lot. I like to think that I do research not just to confirm my views but to expand them. To aid this I don't just do broad topic searches, but try to think laterally from the topic, then type specific theories into the search box. One thought I came up with was: "Who cares?"

Use a USB gamepad as a Raspberry Pi mouse. Raspbian supports mice out of the box, but what if you want to use a USB gamepad to move the pointer around (and click buttons) instead?

Computerised social networks and immigration have been weaponised to destabilise developed nations. Can they hit back the same way?

Stream media from your Raspberry Pi to tablets, consoles, and other devices using MiniDLNA. Hardware Raspberry Pi (preferably running Raspbian) Stonking great USB hard drive full of music, movies, and other goodies.  Why this rocks Because you won't have to lug around your stonking great hard drive all over your house. Because you'll have access to your media library from all devices. Because the Raspberry Pi runs silent. No fan noises.

A basic HTML scraper in Python for stock prices that are only available via website. (i.e. not available via free API).

Controversy returns as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) changes service providers for its facial recognition technology.

Access cloud storage, like OneDrive or Google Drive, as easily on a Raspberry Pi (Raspbian Linux) desktop as you would on a Windows PC.

LibreOffice Calc has no inbuilt stock market functions, and a popular plugin which offered those has stopped working along with changes to Yahoo Finance. Luckily, we can get the latest quotes from Bloomberg. [2018-12-15] Bloomberg Finance is, understandably, blocking multiple simultaneous requests. A more flexible solution is using a Python Stock Scraper .  

World fault lines, major earthquakes, and nuclear reactors.

Slowing time, or bullet time, doesn't make Half Life 2 too easy for me, as I'm not a very good player. I often wished time was used as a mechanic, given the science fiction themes. There's a well known cheat to simply slow down time, but I wanted bullet time to be combined with visual and audio cues.

Infinity pools. These pretentiously-termed architectural fads seek to blur the boundary between inside and outside, between private and public, artificial and natural. Are they Asian? Yes and no.

With the strength to carry on. I wish I could be fishing on a kelong , or soaking in my favourite onsen . Why not both?

We don't need no explanation.

Half-Life 2 was famous on release for its canal levels. The reflections and lighting in the waterways of City 17 showed off the Source Engine's power. I thought to create an oriental take.

This piece derives as much from Kung Fu Panda as it does brush paintings from the Taipei National Museum . Is it wrong to derive from a derivative, especially when the culprit plays so much to stereotypes ?

Asian high-density housing is distinguished by undercrofts, balcony corridors, gated doors, and aircons. Lots of aircons. It seems futile to make a map to highlight these features, especially when the rest - blocky architecture, slap-dash play areas - are common globally.