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lamby

2,362 karma · joined August 20, 2009

Formally of https://www.thread.com (YC S12), https://www.playfire.com/ (acquired).

@lolamby / chris@chris-lamb.co.uk

@ReproBuilds core • Prev @OpenSourceOrg, @spi_inc director and former @Debian Project Leader • Musician • Prev @Tails_live, @thread &tc

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lamby··on Debian bookworm live images now reproducible
This is not quite right. At least in Debian, only files that are newer than some standardised date are to that standardised date. This "clamping" preserves any metadata in older files.
lamby··on Debian bookworm live images now reproducible
Strangely enough, sometimes using the epoch can expose bugs in libraries (etc.) when running or building in a timezone west of Greenwich due to the negative time offset taking time "below" zero.
lamby··on Debian bookworm live images now reproducible
Debian's approach is actually to use the date specified in the top entry in the debian/changelog file. That's more transparent and resilient than any mtime.
lamby··on Debian bookworm live images now reproducible
One of the authors of strip nondeterminism is here. The primary reason it's written in Perl is that given that strip-nondeterminism is used when building 99.9% of all Debian packages, using any other language would have essentially made that language's runtime a dependency for all building Debian packages. (Perl is already required by the build process, whilst Python is not.)
lamby··on They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard
Now, how about drums; an instrument everybody loves?
lamby··on Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows
I think that's OP's point.
lamby··on Why does iron deficiency cause fatigue, even in the absence of anemia?
Very true, but when there's literally 100s of years of women's legitimate medical complaints being dismissed (sometimes with fatal consequences), it is surely not too much of leap to speculate that this is part of the reason.
lamby··on Phone is still the best way to order pizza
> “Would you like to order the same thing you did last time?”

The next iteration of this clearly for them to call you when you are likely to be hungry (and/or drunk) and ask you this. :)

lamby··on Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
"It looks like you are writing a letter^W^W^Wexperiencing a systemic problem. Would you like an individualised solution to that?"
lamby··on Bflat: C# as you know it but with Go-like tooling
> 2. The note D♭ is the same as the note C♯.

Well, actually...

lamby··on Myths in cycling: wider tires are slower
> "If that were the case, surely Tour de France riders would..."

Apologies for appearing to pick you out here, but your comment is representative of a number of eminently "logical" comments made here (as well as many analagous comments on HN in general). So, modern professional cycling is a sport with a 100+ year history, and in 2021 represents a bizarre fusion of the sports entertainment industry, the romantisation/revival of the past, celebrity culture, global cycling manufacturers, the mid-life crises of Wonka-esque team owners, the aestheticisation/fetishisation of the working class, the 'Olympics industry', lurking labour disputes, the fast fashion sector, the ad-hoc application of modern sports psychology, a looming confrontation with its historical emphasis on (mostly horrifically underpaid) white males, neoliberal economics, petty and bountiful financial corruption, widespread pharmaceutical corruption, and the influence of petrochemical money from several ex-Soviet states... All mostly filtered through the celluloid lens of France and Italy, two European nations that have an extremely complicated relationship towards their own history which comes out as a muted pageant of lukewarm national pseudopopulism that is not only is confused within its own borders, but is more-or-less unintelligible to those in the Anglosphere. To imply in any way that a kind of efficient market analysis can apply to decisions made within this sport (that has, if I remember correctly, strict rules about sock length), suggests an insufficient engagement with the background.

lamby··on Why I prefer making useless stuff
Reminds me of the Daoist parable about the "useless" tree that never gets cut down.
lamby··on Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?
> The only non-pain recommendation that comes close is coffee

Placebo or not, I'm a total pain without my coffee.

lamby··on The brain ‘rotates’ memories to save them from new sensations
It would make an interesting essay or monograph to descrbibe the various similes and metaphors that people have variously used to describe the working of the human mind. Descartes, I believe, thought the brain worked via a series of hydraulics, and the Victorians thought that it worked by some variant of electricity, both of these being "new" and possibly exciting technologies for their times. Notwithstanding the scientific versimillitude of these previous theories, it seems only fitting that computers occupy that role today.
lamby··on Wall Street Begins Trading Water Futures as a Commodity
> That's the development. Adjust your outrage accordingly.

Maybe folks are outraged that water is being bought and sold to begin with, but this is the first time they are hearing about it?

lamby··on Facebook was used as a proxy by web scraping bots
May I ask which country?
lamby··on Debian donation for Peertube development
https://peertube.debian.social/
lamby··on Ask HN: How do people become experts?
Hubert L. Dreyfus's "On Internet" contains, amongst many things, one of the most succinct overviews about how one goes from novice to expert. I highly recommend reading this short book, especially in this time of online learning:

https://cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/On-the-Internet.pd... (PDF)

The later chapters on virtual worlds in the second edition have dated a bit, but before that, it's almost entirely gold, even though it was written so long ago.

lamby··on Showing a sunrise/sunset realtime 24/7 with the use of unsecured CCTV cameras
> ouple of rows in the likes table of a social media website

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy this kind of obstinate reductionism and we don't remind ourselves enough that this is what driving lots of our interactions online.

However, I will just add a slight counterpoint in that my bank balance is, at the end of the day, "just a bunch of rows" in a database and, to be perfectly honest, that is somewhat meaningful. :)

lamby··on MagiCan
I'll remember this whenever someone waxes lyrical about the subversive 'genius' of their New Coke campaign.
lamby··on MagiCan
This assumes that you won't get another MagiCan at the next store. :)
lamby··on Atlas of Surveillance
You may be thinking of a different chapter, but O'Brien's apartment wasn't in the Ministry, it was in a different "quarter of the town where they lived" where "the whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of everything, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco, the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro—everything was intimidating".
lamby··on PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN
> or solar/wind energy

Oh, wow, really? I'm sure it is a topic that is debated, but you would put that approximately on the same level as China/TikTok? (Not disagreeing, I just don't follow HN as closely as I used to.)

lamby··on The long history of drinking games
> Suppose we had cocaine snorting games or heroin smoking games

Yes. Imagine.

lamby··on Facebook announces policy changes ahead of 2020 elections
> Facebook does a great job at removing violent content.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19245537

lamby··on Facebook announces policy changes ahead of 2020 elections
I guess "I personally disagree" with genocide.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook...

lamby··on MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software
This actually represents a major and fundamental philosophical shift in the sense that it takes Musescore from being a tool of representation to a tool of creation. I may be overinterpreting this of course, but I am reading a lot into how this might be following (or bucking) a general trend in internet/tech/wider culture that could be characterised as favouring mediums and platforms of consumption over ones of curation… yet alone creation.
lamby··on Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar
Absolutely true, but well-meaning advice like "just use an adblocker" and "why not use a VPN" somehow doesn't quite cut it for me. Defaults matter.
lamby··on Music Grid
Please someone transcribe "The Lick" for this medium.
lamby··on Ask HN: Best books under 200 pages for developers?
During the Spanish Civil War, volunteer fighters found that a book had to be at least 350 pages to stop a bullet.

(Not a dig at your question, it just came to mind.)

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