snickerer

You can hide the position of the cables from fishermen and the public. But if someone knows where they are, it is the KGB, I mean, FSB.

We should make information about infrastructure public. There was a power outtage in Berlin, due to to an attack aginst a 'secret' cable bridge. If the map of cables would have been public, then the public may have had a chance to realize that having no backup cable is a bad idea for critical infrastructure.

The horrors of non-free software...

When I become king of the United Continents, I will make a new rule: If you don't publish high-quality updates for your software for one year, it will become open source automatically.

After working with agent-LLMs for some years now, I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming.

They never helped me solve complex problems with low-level libraries. They can not find nontrivial bugs. They don't get the logic of interwoven layers of abstractions.

LLMs pretend to do this with big confidence and fail miserably.

For every problem I need to turn my brain to ON MODE and wake up, the LLM doesn't wake up.

It surprised me how well it solved another task: I told it to set up a website with some SQL database and scripts behind it. When you click here, show some filtered list there. Worked like a charm. A very solved problem and very simple logic, done a zillion times before. But this saved me a day of writing boilerplate.

I agree that there is no indication that LLMs will ever cross the border from simple-boilerplate-land to understanding-complex-problems-land.

I can't connect to this site because my adblocker doesn't like it. It seems to be on the bad-domain-list https://www.cromite.org/filters/badblock_lite.txt. Now is the question: is ipinfo.io on this list for a good reason?

Meshtastic: Text message mesh network using LoRa modems.

Reticulum: full network stack (alternative to IP), mesh, focus on low-speed, unreliable connections. Transport layer agnostic. Current 'Hardware drivers' are written for LoRa, Internet Tunnels, Wifi, Amateur radio.

Reticulum sounds great? It is, but still has 2 problems: 1. The only complete & stable implementation is written in Python and 2. The existing end-user applications have confusing and complex UIs (except for the command-line tools for remote shell and file copy).

Physics are not so bad for interstellar travel.

We just need a an engine that accelerates our space ships with 1g constantly. With that, we would reach something like 80% lightspeed after one year. Exactly in the middle between start and destination, we would turn the ship around and start accelerating towards earth again.

A trip to Alpha Centauri could be done in less than 4 years ship-time. Earth-time would be some years longer.

1g constant acceleration would be quite comfy for humans.

The only thing we need for this plan is the constantly running engine. I propose to bend space-time in front (or behind) the ship, for it to keep falling forwards.

Thanks. On Debian trixie, xdg-desktop-portal-wlr is broken. I had to compile in manually, but this did the trick.

The only thing that does not work for me with Teams as chromium 'app' is the screen sharing (on Wayland). Does your --enable-features fix this?

My personal search ended with the ZSA Moonlander.

$40/kWh sounds so fantastic, I can't believe it. Could you please provide a source for that price? Where will I get such cheap batteries?

I bought a Moonlander two years ago and the price (plus shipping to Europe) did really hurt. I also had to spend a lot of time into the complex configuration of the individual key mapping. And to learn the mapping.

It was absolutely worth it and I would do it again. I love that the keys aren’t staggered like on a typical keyboard — which I find rather silly — but instead are perfectly aligned in straight columns. And the thumb keys. And the configurable chords (yes, chords, that's nerdcore). And much more.

I use todo.txt on steroids. In fact, the file is called todo.org and is best used in Emacs' org-mode, which does the best of all worlds for decades now. I can have a plain ASCII todo list and some algorithmic magic that understands it, if I want that.

Yes, you could have a peer-to-peer connection with bluetooth as the transport layer. But that's not the vision. The vision is an out-of-the-box bluetooth mesh network, like what you have when you connect to an IP network with Reticulum.

This is already mostly done.

Participate in the development of Reticulum. Install the app Sideband on your Smartphone or other device.

Sideband is a chat app that uses LXMF. LXMF is a messaging protocol based on Reticulum. Reticulum is a full network stack that is decentralized and transport layer agnostic.

What we need for your vision is LoRa modems integrated in our phones.

Or just a bluetooth mesh interface for Reticulum. That is a great idea. Develop that, and you have exactly what you described.

To be more specific: Reticulum's main program is the daemon rnsd. It uses so called interfaces and can route between them (WiFi, LoRa, other radio services...). Implement a new interface type that uses the technology called 'bluetooth mesh' and your vision is done.

Trump: We are buying much more than we are selling. Let's make buying more expensive for us! I am a genius!

Economists: No, no, no, no...

The People: Genius! Genius! Let's vote him!

As a society, we should defend stupid people from being scammed. No irony here. Let's defend the poor, the children, the stupid, these who can't defend themselves.

The gers are standardized. There is a big daily market in Ulaanbaatar where you can get all spare parts and complete gers. In 2017, the price for one ger was something like $1000.

For that money, you get a well-isolated easily movable tiny house in a country where you are allowed to settle everywhere (but if you have 2000 sheep with you, you should better discuss the usage of the pastureland with the locals) without paying rent (outside the city).

Choosing a ger for housing is not only about tradition and culture. It is quite rational in that situation.

Very clear and precise line of thoughts. Thank you for that post.

I love the use of And. And I adore the semicolons; both go well together.

I love to use ChatGPT for creative cooking.

In my camping car, somewhere in the desert, I sometimes have limited resources. Like a can of beans, some fresh potatoes, an apple, Italian spices, and so on.

I like to ask ChatGPT: Listen, I have this stuff, I want to create some food with strong umami taste, do you have an idea?

It is very good at that, the results were often amazing.

This is its core feature: 'feel' loose connections between concepts. Italian pasta with maple syrup? Yes, but only if you add some Arabic spices...

"AI" is, due to the nature of artificial neuronal networks, not intelligent. It does not learn intelligence, it does learn feelings. Not emotions, but feelings in the sense of unconscious learning ('I get a feeling how to ride the bicycle off-road ').

I am in a similar boat, I will launch a little tool (web page) for creating legally compliant invoices in Germany.

But I will go down the 3€/use road instead of the subscription one. I don't know if this is better, I just do what I would prefer as a customer.

Fun libc comparison by the author of musl.

My getaway is: glibc is bloated but fast. Quite unexpected combination. Am I right?

I did not understand what this is about from the article. It is social and wants to empower people, but how?

From reading the 'about' page I understood that this is a new social media platform in the Fediverse.

Now there is obviously one question: why should I participate in this and not in the existing projects like Mastodon? Why did you split up?

I suggest the Bonfire people should put the answer to that question on the top of the 'about' page.

People and societies work a lot with re-enactment. I think of, for example, pirates. There was nothing fun about them, watching the Jolly Roger approaching you must be horrible, followed by a gruesome death. But we, adults and children both, are enjoying to play pirates. Maybe the re-enactment of something brutal can be a healthy way to get over it for humans.

I totally feel that.

I would love to play an RPG where I need to take notes. Where I fear to get lost in the wilderness if I take the wrong turn because I could get eaten by a horrible beast then.

I mean, that's what real adventures are about, or not? The mystery of exploration. The need to navigate by markers in nature or even the sun.

In a perfect world for me, game devs would add more dynamic and intelligent NPCs with their own agenda. I am bored by the feeling of Potemkin villages, where everything feels like it is designed to give you a smooth game experience and every NPC is standing there forever, just waiting for you.

This is beautiful.

I would really like to know how his father's trip influenced the author's life. He mentions this several times, but does not explain.

That's why there are modern projects like Exult. Exult makes the playing experience more convenient for players without gray beards.

That is mind-blowing. I remember I stopped to play Ultima VII at the beginning of this quest because I lost the track.

Exult/Ultima VII is an RPG with a real story. I enjoyed it. If you people out there like RPGs, try it, if you can live with the 'retro' graphics.

What is wrong with me?

I tried several modern Civilizations but I keep coming back to Freeciv. Freeciv from 1996 with its Civ II ruleset is more fun for me than Civ 5 or 6.

I never thought of myself as conservative or sticking-to-the-old just because I am used to it. Or am I?