Replying to
@hazelweakly
I am quite certain that the "Computer Science" qualifier is redundant.
Remote
ocratato
@ocratato@discuss.systems
mastodon 4.7.3Retired software architect.
Linux and C++
Enjoy impossible software projects.
39 Followers
36 Following
23 Posts
Joined August 14, 2024
Replying to
@david_chisnall
The underlying problem is that rail freight gets to include all the costs associated with the entire rail network; while trucks get to use roads that are paid for out of our taxes.
Upgraded to "Not Working".
This laptop is actually a nest of virtual machines. The host does very little beyond running libvirt and its associates.
All user data is on a separate drive that is provided to the VMs via NFS from a server VM. I have multiple users defined that I use for different purposes, testing, development, and general stuff. Each of these users can log into any of the VMs (except for one or two special ones) and see all of their data.
The gotcha with this configuration is the user's directories where programs save configuration data. There is no guarantee that the VMs will have the same version of the programs installed, so data in .local and .config could become confused, or worse.
My solution (from 2020) was to give each user a directory with subdirectories for each VM. A pair of soft-links would then map .local to the VM specific version, via a link in /var/run/$USER/. This link was set up by a script run from /etc/profile when the user logs in.
This worked fine until recently. There is now several things that try to access .local before /etc/profile is called. They tend to not work very well. Some quietly fail with just a bit of inconvenience. Fedora 42 fails completely, as I found out with a recent upgrade.
Each VM is created with a conventional admin user, so I can easily apply a correction. It appears I will need to put the machine soft link in /etc so that it is always there. Some scripting in my future...
Products sold in smaller packages.
Jam went from 500gm to 375gm.
My reasoning: It must be very valuable so should only be used on special occasions.
The smaller container lasts about 3 times longer than the large one. I am sure this will make the supplier happy.
SASSY News
I have completed the "concepts of a design" document. When you set out to write a very brief overview and end up with a 37 page document the magnitude of it does hit home.
Its here if anyone is interested:
https://ocratato-sassy.sourceforge.io/pdf/sassy-concepts.pdf
Replying to
@DropBear@theblower.au @InsurgoFormica@aus.social @anne_twain@theblower.au @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au
I do agree that privatisation was taken too far. De--privatising everything would be one way of correcting things, but is probably not very practical.
We have to realise that the expertise the public service once had is long gone. It can be recovered but will take a while.
Privatisation was sold as a more efficient solution. It might have been if a proper market economy was constructed, but, as is the LNP way, they tended to create monopolies instead.
What we need, I think, is legislation that makes it necessary that in any market there is at least a dozen real competitors. This would force them to compete on price and service rather than price gouging.
If the market cannot support that many, the government will set up a government owned business (like the original Commonwealth Bank) to keep the competition alive, and take over if the market fails completely.
Replying to
@screwlisp @hazelweakly
Yes.
Cache invalidation --> throwing out the things you thought you knew when better evidence to the contrary comes along.
Replying to
@RaymondPierreL3@aus.social
If there are 100,000 approvals that are not being built does this not indicate that the supply side of the equation is a bit broken?
It appears to me the issue is that developers are holding off building them so they can get better prices due to their own self induced shortages.
Perhaps we should be looking at the house building industry to see what the hold up is?
(My cynical old self is suggesting collusion among the developers, aka a market failure.)
Replying to
@DropBear@theblower.au
I recall some similar situation quite a few years ago. I think it was about copyright laws.
At the time I was considering asking our government what other country's laws do we have to abide by?
The USA is definitely one of them. I expect the UK might be another.
Replying to
@aby
I imagine some future One Nation government will find this useful when some politician starts to ask awkward questions.
Replying to
@rperezrosario
Creating ADRs is a very good idea.
Keeping them until they are needed is often the more difficult problem.
I suggest writing them in some plain text format (Markdown for example) and storing in the same version control system you use for the source code.
The same should apply to all the other design documentation.
Replying to
@troberts@theblower.au
It depends.
Quality of life, scenery --> Canberra
Job opportunities --> Adelaide
Replying to
The Next Phase of SASSY (2)
The core task of the data entry system is to create a data entry form from an RDF schema.
I have created a simple instance of this, but it is quite limited in both its abilities and its style. Something more flexible would be nice.
I am thinking that an Entry Form Language would be a useful middle ground between the schemas and whatever it is that implements the data entry system. This would be an RDF schema that defined the elements of entry forms. Specific forms would be created from a combination of schema data and style information.
As a proof of concept I will have a look at Qt's QML. It is a language for defining user interfaces, and appears to have both static and dynamic capabilities. It can therefore support both the classical data entry task as well as something that evolves with the user's new schemas.
2/n
#SASSY
Replying to
Anonymous Nodes for SASSY
The anonymous nodes have now been implemented and tested.
The core part was doing a Base64 encoding of the 16 byte UUID. There are many implementations of this floating about, so, obviously I had to invent my own. The thought was that there isn't any functions in standard libraries that can copy a single bit from one object to another. Time there was.
Two alternative designs were examined. One uses a mask to select the bit and another to set it in the destination. The other shifts the bits from and to the desired position. The latter requires no branches, so I thought it might be quicker, but it was actually about 10% slower.
The end result was a little slower than other solutions for Base64 encoding that process multiple bits at once. However, I do think this version is a lot clearer about what is being done.
Now I just have to examine each of the 100 or so places that use blank nodes and see what changes to make.
#SASSY #RDF #programming
Replying to
The Next Phase of SASSY (3)
The third class of data entry is intended for use during the initial discovery phase of a project when not much is known and a lot of note taking is required.
The idea is to have a mind mapping style of program that is in the form of a graph. It will likely get quite large so it will need to support search and a variety of graph visualisation techniques.
I imagine it will also have hooks to schema based entry forms for various types of data. These would include a glossary of domain specific terminology, a bibliography, and a directory of people and organisations associated with the project.
#SASSY
Replying to
@aby
That was not my intention at all.
I was trying to point out to our politicians that this sort of thing is dangerous, and they are not immune.
I was watching Ms Hossenfelder's latest on the Fermi paradox.
I think that a couple of factors are missing from the Drake equation. It seems to me that there are some significant hurdles that an advanced civilisation needs to overcome for them to be visible to us.
We have been assuming that we would see their electromagnetic emissions. This would be true if they were space faring, as its the only way to communicate between worlds (or even moons). Without space travel most communications would be via point to point connections, such as fibre optics, as there is not enough bandwidth in EM for the ubiquitous communications that we currently enjoy.
Two scenarios that would prevent space travel by an advanced civilisation are "water worlds" and "super Earths".
Developing technology might be possible on a water world via the use of enzymes rather than fire, but space travel would seem to be a big ask.
For planets that are just a bit bigger than Earth (higher g) the rocket equation would make getting to orbit infeasible.
It seems to me that Earth might be rather special by having enough mass to hold its atmosphere, but still allow rockets to get into orbit; while also having both large oceans and dry land.
SASSY News
The project has a rather lot of parts. At times I am surprised to find parts I had forgotten even existed.
I am now writing a document that summarises what there is, and what is planned. It's not a design, but perhaps it might be a "concept of a design", and in keeping with that, it should be done in a couple of weeks. 😀
Replying to
@RaymondPierreL3@aus.social
When markets fail it seems to me that a government has two options:
1) Provide their own competition. Either set up a department to build housing, or commission houses from the existing builders. The first is typically not very satisfactory as you end up with large numbers of identical buildings which become undesirable places to live. (see Canberra in the early days) and the second can lead to corruption. Neither of these would survive a right wing government in any useful way.
2) The other option is to encourage more competition. A possible way would be to use the taxation system to penalise those with too large a market share. Use the taxation system to make it financially attractive to split your company.
I suspect a market share tax would solve a lot of the problems of capitalism in a democracy.
Replying to
@deFractal@infosec.exchange
Perhaps the entire industry made a wrong turn.
The equipment for making chips is now so expensive that very few can afford to buy it. The reason for that high cost is the difficulty in using light to print the patterns on the silicon.
The alternative is to use electron beam lithography. This is not used by the big manufacturers because it is too slow.
However, if we could create a small electron beam based machine that could create chips on demand that sold for a few thousand dollars (the machine, not the chips) there would soon be enough of them to satisfy any demand.
The actual processing is not too difficult - I have seen videos of hobbyists doing it in their shed.
Replying to
@DropBear@theblower.au @InsurgoFormica@aus.social @anne_twain@theblower.au @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au
You won't get any argument from me about how bad an idea privatising natural monopolies is. It inevitably leads to actual monopolies, which can then lead to corruption in everything they touch.
I will still make an argument for some form of capitalist system. Not because they are innovative - that mostly comes from universities, CSIRO, and similar. Turning innovations into useful, affordable products does seem to require a capitalist approach. (Consider the products developed by the Soviet Union and its satellites for a counter example.)
The trick for democracies is to find a way of preventing those private enterprises from merging into monopolies. Failure to do that will lead to the situation the USA finds itself in.