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packrat

@packrat

Engineering educator, maker, and artist.

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18.08.2023
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Latest posts by packrat @packrat

What's your favourite word? words.rotis.net

26.02.2026 04:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Another ex G person who knows him here. Hoping for the best case.

25.04.2025 04:59 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

So the reason it's a good idea is the social media makes kids unhappy, but they're terrified of being excluded by not using it. By taking it away from everyone you solve the second problem, and the first will probably sort itself out.

30.11.2024 10:07 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This is going to largely come down to idiots trying to define social media.

I define it something with
1. likefarming and
2. algorithmic presenation of new data.

reddit sits on the edge because the algorithm mostly wombles around in the topics youv'e specifically subscribed to.

30.11.2024 10:06 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

When ping was compiled with the added flag and code, the ping binary was actually 3 bytes smaller. The bloat people walked away in a huff, the -a flag was added to ping, and because userland on a mac derives mostly from FreeBSD, mjy old -a flag is right here.

I should make a video about this. 6/6

28.11.2024 03:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

It was initially rejected as bloat, as something you could just use sed for etc. That was fair, but it was also really convient if you ever touched thinnet. Eventually the bloat was the last argument standing, but because of the djinnn inhabiting gcc, 5/

28.11.2024 03:34 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That meant I could go around the lab crawling under the desks, wiggling bits of that bloody awful thinnet and listening for the beeping noise to stop and start. Saved a bunch of time.

On a whim, I decided to get it upstreamed to FreeBSD, found a friend committer to shepherd it through. 4/

28.11.2024 03:32 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

In frustration at having to walk back to my unix machine that was plugged into the network which was pinging them to see what had fallen off the network I was wiggling cables, I hacked the FreeBSD ping command to optionally include a BEL character. 3/

28.11.2024 03:31 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

It was a lab full of old NT machines connected through the desks with dodgy thinnet ethernet in the structures lab (a glorified shed), most of the cables locally built and I was trying to figure out which of the cables were flaking as a result of that environment. 2/

28.11.2024 03:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

There's a funny story behind the -a flag on ping on a modern mac. ping doesn't have an -a flag in any of the native *nix streams, despite the obvious way that would be both useful and apt for name analogy.

That flag dates back to a very long weekend I spend back in the 90s fixing a computer lab. 1/

28.11.2024 03:26 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This is probably the most inane article I've seen in a while. Yes, they use fancy new words like "commits" but this boils down to people so detached from reality that they can't see why KLOCs are a terrible productivity metric.

28.11.2024 03:07 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

We all know that quality labelling for machine learning systems is decades old at this point, yes? Not "AI" current era specific.

26.11.2024 11:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

But they're both great :)

25.11.2024 16:56 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

But imagine how much money and regulation they can extra from the US government now!

24.11.2024 16:43 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

OH yes, and people immediately wittered on that it would erase draftsman (who aren't engineers) whereas in fact it simply changed what they did.

You do know they aren't engineers, yes?

24.11.2024 06:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

In the 90s? pre-meaningful web? Yes, I was and there wasn't anything like that, it was actualy pretty hard to easily find examples of anything and books were king. In the 2000s there were a few more, but they didn't have as much impact as these do today.

23.11.2024 15:32 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Algebra isn't a hard maths problem, but it is a type of abstract that is going to be pretty helpful.

23.11.2024 15:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I didn't assert this has been the same for 30 years you did. So you need to consider what things looked like 30 years ago.

23.11.2024 01:11 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

re-learning it should not be as hard.

22.11.2024 16:41 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Engineers have not been saying this for decades, because nobody was for e.g saying don't each statics and dynamics, just issue everyone with a finite-element-analysis package.

THe AI thing is a threat, but more to early career expeirfenc ethan teaching per se.

22.11.2024 16:40 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I've been thinking about this. This is an existential threat, that short-sighted non-techinlcal would redirect the work we use to train new engineers to cheap AI without considering the consequences.

22.11.2024 16:39 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I would definitely say you don't need extensive calculus etc. Some linear algebra is almost certainly going to help, and I'm pretty sure without algebra, some abstract concepts are going to be hard. That said, if you are missing algebra, this is not at all an insurmountable kill, just do it first.

22.11.2024 16:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

You can imagine anything you want but the maths doesn't work out that easily. This is probably why you'd plan ot cycle your raid set from time to time, when the disks are wearing out any way
.

22.11.2024 16:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

It feels like "diagrams" could be doing a hell of a lot of lifting here.

22.11.2024 12:13 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Eldest is finally doing some slightly interesting maths homework, but we are both entirely unconvinced made up mnemonics like "simpify like a butterfly before you multiply like an iguana or something" are helpful, when we have the handy-dandy hammer of prime factorisation.

Yay. Hammer :)

22.11.2024 12:11 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I don't think you read what I posted quite carefully enough.

22.11.2024 12:09 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That's true, but you're looking at drives in sizes no longer produced where they are gouging people with no options out of older stock. I recently did a break down of drive prices and for NAS rated drives there was a massive premium below 8 or 10Tb after which it sort of flattened out.

22.11.2024 12:07 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Preview
Reddit - Dive into anything This is a sub that aims at bringing data hoarders together to share their passion with like minded people.

I am pretty sure that's not the case.

www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...

22.11.2024 11:52 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Isn't this unfair for people for whom thinking is a second language?

22.11.2024 11:48 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Surely there's a productivity hit from the compiler requiring you to to sanctimonious at everyone within 15 meters at all times?

22.11.2024 11:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0