antimidas

joined 2 years ago
[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Apple used to have a function in macs with FireWire, where if you had T pressed down on the keyboard while booting, the computer booted into a mode where you could use it as a FireWire external hard drive. An insanely useful feature, for migrating files off old machines, installing OS onto a machine without a functional optical drive, quickly stealing your friend's hard drive contents etc.

It's a shame it didn't really take off as a more common feature. It would be a useful feature in so many situations, nowadays the closest I can get to it is a custom USB stick with a linux distro that tries to discover all volumes and expose them as network drives, but it's a lot more complicated to use than just having something you plug in and it simply works. I'd love it if they did a similar thing with thunderbolt, but as far as I know it's no longer an option.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That would be the dream indeed. It's so fluid after you learn it. Other networking equipment often has good configuration CLIs as well (like juniper and vyos), but Cisco is probably the best in my experience. It's also nice how consistent they are across generations.

You can get about as close as it's possible in a normal operating system with zsh and plugins like zsh-autocomplete. Bash tries to pick up the possible alternatives from context as well (with tab suggestions) that act somewhat like ? on Cisco CLI, but implementing it is left up to the command itself to provide for the shell. Many commands luckily provide very robust autocompletion to bash out-of-the-box, especially if installed via the system package manager.

Unfortunately we'll probably never reach the point of actual configuration CLIs since they only have a set amount of commands that are developed by the same company. It would be close to impossible to achieve the same level of standardisation for a general operating system, as we don't know the entire configuration of the system and there are multiple incompatible flag schemes. (As styles go, things like dd and ffmpeg throw a wrench in the works with their non-standard flags)

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago

I'd say it's a lukewarm take at best. A million dollar company is something like a small (<10 people) consulting agency or a couple hot dog stands in a relatively busy area. So like you said, nothing exceptional.

Leaving out self-employed individuals and 2-3 person hair salons and the like, a million dollar revenue is not really something difficult to reach. Especially if you include things like retail, where moving any inventory increases revenue a lot. Even for companies outside retail, when keeping in mind how much one is able to bill for things like trades in the US, revenue increases quite quickly.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Windows is an interesting operating system in the sense that Microsoft has somehow been able to make the UI less intuitive and more bloated in every iteration of it since NT4. At least until XP they knew not to change the normal mode of operation, and realized that they had to backtrack after Win 8. That's one thing Apple has done right with Mac OS, you could take someone who has never used anything but System 7 (which is over 30 years old at this point) and they'd be able to pick up the most relevant changes in minutes. Most complicated thing for them would be to learn the fact that you can run multiple programs at the same time without the system crashing (my dad took almost a decade to finally believe that you can do heavy editing while the system is copying stuff, after migrating to OSX).

I understand that older versions of windows look aged in comparison, but you can update the look without doing things like wasting screen space or changing normal user paths. And without implementing AI into an operating system that can do just fine by itself. Also, bring back the option to force the UI into classic mode – it's what made Win server 2012 bearable compared to Windows 8.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

For some reason this reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL](the COBOL programming language), though not even COBOL was batshit enough to use numerals written in plain English. Everything else was in plain English, though, which was supposed to make it easier to read and write, but is in reality a horrible idea.

Though all caps just reminds me of early programming languages in general, since we didn't separate uppercase and lowercase in all machines back then, instead using encoding schemes like DEC SIXBIT. Saving memory by using only six bits per character instead of seven or eight, and such. Six bit characters had matching word lengths, before the concept of a byte there used to be loads of 12-bit and 36-bit architectures, that more-or-less went away when the industry almost collectively decided to take byte-addressed memory into use.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

To hammer the point through here's the same comment with the "complexity" removed, a bit more akin to tokenized text:

because of redundancy modern written language has a lot of features that make it easier to read that were added as society became more literal things like capitalization punctuation (a surprisingly recent addition) even separately marking vowels wasnt a given for all writing systems (see old hebrew as an example) capital letter in the start of a sentence saves you from picking that up from context especially when coupled together with the stop (.) signifying the end of it redundancy is actually a very natural phenomenon and spoken language has loads more compared to written examples

its complexity that aids the understanding trading some of the simplicity and speed of writing to better reading comprehension as per why capital and lowercase in latin script capitals are derived from the letters that were chiseled lowercase used to be just a handwritten thing written language naturally evolved to make use of these two systems to aid in reading so things like capitalization are actually completely opposite from added complexity actually making the language easier to comprehend after a bit of an initial learning curve

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Because of redundancy. Modern written language has a lot of features that make it easier to read, that were added as society became more literal. Things like capitalization, punctuation (a surprisingly recent addition), even separately marking vowels wasn't a given for all writing systems (see old Hebrew as an example). Capital letter in the start of a sentence saves you from picking that up from context, especially when coupled together with the stop (.) signifying the end of it. Redundancy is actually a very natural phenomenon, and spoken language has loads more compared to written examples.

It's complexity that aids the understanding, trading some of the simplicity and speed of writing to better reading comprehension. As per why capital and lowercase, in latin script capitals are derived from the letters that were chiseled, lowercase used to be just a handwritten thing. Written language naturally evolved to make use of these two systems to aid in reading. So things like capitalization are actually completely opposite from added complexity, actually making the language easier to comprehend after a bit of an initial learning curve.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago

Precisely the location. Not getting covered by snow is another benefit, it's nice to see the technology being used more.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago

That's partly the reason, that's why they're used e.g. for marking bike paths. This has the added benefit of being very noticeable when you're looking at the ground.

 

The tram line has been open for about two years now, but people still have trouble remembering the tram has the right of way. Maybe this will help, the audible warning doesn't seem to be enough since many people have headphones (understandable, noise cancelling is a must if the city has any car traffic).

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They did not really work for us, but purposely built a pension system where they paid in about 10-13 % of their income towards the pensions, while reaching pension age between 60-65. That, and a public health sector that prioritises urgent care over preventative, meaning there's insane queues for anyone who can wait as their health issues pile up – since they're not in immediate risk of death. Most urgent care gets used by pensioners, leading to the budget not being enough for anything else.

My generation pays 24 % of all income as a pension contribution before all other taxes, pension age will be between 68-70 and the system still doesn't have enough money and there's pressure for increasing contributions even further. Still the current retirees have the audacity to complain if someone tells them they had it easier. The pension system was designed as an insurance, instead of everyone's payments being invested. I have practically zero trust I'll ever see a single cent of the money I put in.

Most of the ones responsible for actually building the welfare state are already dead, or close to dying. The ones I'm talking about are their children who chose to ignore all the problems they were presented with (like the ballooning costs of pensions and healthcare, and shrinking generations), and are now whining when the next generation doesn't want to pay for all their mistakes.

The main reason I'm so fed up with the current retirees in Finland is, that there's been insane amounts of austerity for years now – but the austerity measures never affect pensions as they're treated as an earned benefit. Without any thought toward the fact that the first generations to actually "save" their pension in full (i.e. contributing enough) were those born in 60's and 70's, not the ones who are currently retired. Also the choices etc. are already taken into account, you don't get a new liver if you're an alcoholic and things like that.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Precisely, additionally we're collectively too poor for healthcare unless we do our best to reduce the need for it in the first place. That's why many countries in the EU for example are trying to regulate people away from unhealthy behaviour. Healthcare costs are already disproportionately burdened by the workforce while those who benefit are people on their last legs, since your guaranteed necessary care (at least in the Finnish system). That's why there have been talks to lax the guarantees of the healthcare system for e.g. people over 80, who cause almost the majority of all costs.

The society is planning on the basis that I'll be a productive worker until 69,5 years old – that's the recommended age for starting my government backed pension. Good luck making it that far without a rigorous focus on one's health.

 
 

Film shot at box speed, stand developed with Rodinal. This is the location of the old Crichton-Vulkan shipyard in Turku, which used to be a major shipbuilder in Finland. Some of the most significant ships to get built here were e.g. the submarines used by the Finnish navy in WWII, first of which was originally built as a prototype for the Reichsmarine. It's still possible to go see one of them, CV-707 or Vesikko, in Suomenlinna where it's on display.

The shipyard, after multiple restructurings, eventually located to Perno, Turku, and was eventually purchased by Meyer. Now it's mostly known for building the worlds largest cruise ships, such as the Royal Caribbean Icon-class. The old dry-dock and shipyard were developed into new housing, and on the right you can see some of the most expensive homes in all of Turku.

 

Picture taken from Renforsin ranta in Kajaani, a location of a former paper mill now housing the Finnish supercomputers as well as LUMI, a jointly owned machine that was the fastest in Europe back in 2023 when it was built.

 

Shooting my first roll of Delta 3200 went well. The development, however, did not. In this picture there are examples of bent film, fingerprints, film getting wet when being put onto the spiral and sticking to itself – but they end up looking quite cool in my opinion.

The picture itself is taken from the operations center in the now retired Finnish Navy minelayer Keihässalmi.

 

First tests with medium format, with the new-to-me soviet beauty. Finally got my hands to a economical flatbed capable of medium format, in this case an old canoscan 8000f. It doesn't have recent drivers, so my current workaround is a VM running Win 7 – might write SANE drivers for it at some point if it doesn't prove too difficult a task. Resolution is low (2400dpi) but enough for medium format since there's more to work with (I already have a dedicated machine for 135), and it's not like more recent flatbeds are much better in terms of real optical resolution. What these have got going for them is the price, got mine for 15 €.

 

Ever since Mv3 came into enforcement I've been using a local DNS blocklist in /etc/hosts (UHB more specifically) for locking the browser down as much as possible. Unfortunately this has lead to some major issues when browsing, i.e. 5-10 second latency for every single request that goes through the browser. Can't completely stop using some Chromium-browser since I need to test my work on the browser at some point.

I'm suspecting it's due to the browser waiting for some telemetry endpoint, or trying to get around the block through some other means (which won't work since outgoing DNS via anything else but the gateway is blocked in the firewall), and giving up after a specified time. At this point I've narrowed the issue down to the full version of UHB, as when toggling this off the requests no longer hang before going through. Firefox doesn't suffer from the same issues – every Chromium-derived platform suffers, though, including Electron applications like VSCode. Toggling async DNS off hasn't helped (which previously supposedly has helped some), neither has turning secure DNS (read Google's system DNS sinkhole workaround) off.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else encountered the same issue or is using a version of Chromium that's not suffering from the same issues? This is getting a bit infuriating, and though I've already moved my browsing on Firefox, it's still bothersome to run e.g. UI tests when every fetch operation takes 10 s. This even happens when connecting to stuff running on localhost or LAN addresses.

 

First time trying caffenol. Development turned out relatively well, though the film was underdeveloped – also there were some issues with fixing since I wanted to try using a salt bath instead of proper fixer (the real fixer had gone bad). Ended up having to use actual fixer anyway and as a result the film ended up a bit foggy.

Overall I'm still happy with the results but will probably stick to Xtol and Rodinal for now.

 

Turns out it was just some sham poo

 

'cause he was UN-professional

 

Housing is something people need, and is similarly a necessity like food or electricity. It needs a lot of money to keep in a livable shape, plus constant attention, and will lose its value if just left in place. As such it's not an investment, unless the market isn't working like it's supposed to.

When there was the long period of "low inflation" after the 2008 housing crisis, it's because we didn't consider housing prices a part of the inflation – if housing getting more expensive would've been taken into account we should've never had such a long period of low interest rates. If rents going up is inflation, appreciation should be as well.

As such, housing getting more expensive should be considered a bad thing, as it leads people to mistakenly see it as an investment. People will then "protect" their investment by trying to prevent new projects etc. Nobody would get angry if bread was cheaper the next day, just because they already bought it yesterday.

EDIT: apparently I've been a bit misinformed. I'm not from the US, but EU (Finland) and have understood that our indices don't really include owner-occupied housing in the calculation, but only the direct costs like energy and rent with some weight – which was at least partly the case, but there would seem to be some changes coming. Thanks for the enlightening replies, I'll have to read a bit more into it.

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