NaibofTabr

Blasphemy. We are all wrought by His noodly appendage.

… the double slit experiment [makes] me angry.

I think if the conclusion of the double slit experiment doesn’t make you a little upset, you’re not really paying attention to the implications.

I think Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment, with all its variations, shows a particular obsession with trying to get a definite answer from the universe.

The fact that it is possible to decide whether a wave or particle feature manifests itself long after—and even space-like separated from—the measurement teaches us that we should not have any naive realistic picture for interpreting quantum phenomena. Any explanation of what goes on in a specific individual observation of one photon has to take into account the whole experimental apparatus of the complete quantum state consisting of both photons, and it can only make sense after all information concerning complementary variables has been recorded. Our results demonstrate that the viewpoint that the system photon behaves either definitely as a wave or definitely as a particle would require faster-than-light communication. Because this would be in strong tension with the special theory of relativity, we believe that such a viewpoint should be given up entirely.

The universe we inhabit is a goofy, nonsensical place that frustrates our attempts to comprehend it.

Well, there’s no accounting for taste.

Meh, this approach to making software is written from the perspective that the only goal for doing so is to sell the software.

The author is a perfect fit for the present culture of Silicon Valley.

Hmm, where are all those freeze peach patriots…?

I agree in principle, but they give the impression of being so, and it’s the impression that needs to change. In order to address this, we have to recognize the impression that other (probably most) people have.

We need to start a public trend of labelling these surveillance companies as voyeurs until everyone thinks of them as perverts first and legitimate companies second.

ok, only terminal for you, and only Thompson shell

but my creativity

“We”?

This is the plot of the 2001 film classic Cats & Dogs

Um, it’s the heat, pressure, and ionizing radiation of the fusion reaction that would destroy the panels.

We can’t make it so large that its own gravity will contain the reaction mass, so it has to be kept inside a very strong magnetic field created by huge magnets. You can’t put solar panels inside the reaction chamber, they would get destroyed.

It is not any one individual’s responsibility to fix any other particular individual, true.

Rather, it is the community’s responsibility to care for the community. All of the community.

If you start declaring some members of the community to be undeserving of care, then you are no better than the fascists.

People who are treated like outcasts behave like outcasts. The judgment becomes self-fulfilling.

The solution to this problem is inclusiveness and socialization, not further judgment and ostracization.

Would it? I’ve seen some videos here of people absolutely harassing lone ICE agents in cars sitting in parking lots, and those guys just drove off as fast as they could manage.

If you have a crowd of 20+ people around the car, not doing anything directed at the occupant, just kind of hanging around the outside, plus cameras taking video and actively posting it to social media because, hey, flash mob!.. what then?

Suddenly I’m having visions of the flash mob trend returning with purpose.

Anywhere an ICE agent is sitting in a parking lot… suddenly showtunes and choreographed dancing, or just a block party, all around them.

effectively work with AI and know how to QA.

These are antithetical.

Using generative algorithms to perform a complex skill leads to deterioration of the skill. The more you rely on the algorithm to perform a given task, the less effective you will be at performing QA of that task, as your grasp of the specifics of the task fades.

Any developer who has not spent time learning to “reliably hand-code” will be completely useless for performing any code QA. If the industry does not provide time, space, and incentives for junior developers to learn those skills on their own, the future will be void of any effective QA.

I know where it frequently fails, I’m very pleased with the output. And, I’ve shipped 4 fully QA’d apps in the past month.

Yes, well, you don’t know what you don’t know.

I would still be on the first one without AI.

The quality of a product is proportional to the amount of time and (human) attention spent on the product.

First and most important:

In the context of long-term data storage
ALL DRIVES ARE CONSUMABLES

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you only skim the rest of my post, re-read the above line and accept it as fundamental truth. “Long-term” means 1+ years, by the way.

It does not matter what type of drive you buy, how much you spend on it, who manufactured it, etc. The drive will fail at some point, probably when you’re least prepared for it. You need to plan around that. You need to plan for the drive being completely useless and the data on it unrecoverable post-failure. Wasting time and money to acquire the fanciest most bulletproof drives on the market is a pointless resource pit, and has more to do with dick-measuring contests between data-hoarders.

Knife geeks buy $500+ patterned steel chef’s knives with ebony handles and finely ground edges and bla bla bla. Professional kitchens buy the basic Victorinox with the plastic handle. Why? Because they actually use it, not mount it on a wall to look pretty.

The knife is a consumable, not an heirloom. So are your storage drives. We call them “spinning rust” for a reason.

The solution to drive failure is redundancy. Period.

Unfortunately, this reality runs counter to the desire to maximize available storage. Do not follow the path of desire, that way lies data loss and outer darkness. Fault-tolerant is your watchword. Component failure is unpredictable, no matter how much money you spend. A random manufacturing defect will ruin your day when you least expect it.

A minimum safe layout is to have 2 live copies of data (one active, one mirror), hot standby for 1 copy (immediate swap-in when the active or mirror fails), and cold standby on the shelf to replace the hot standby when it enters service.

Note that this does not describe a specific number of disks, but copies of data. The minimum to implement this is 4 disks of identical storage capacity (2 live, 1 hot standby, 1 on the shelf) and a server with slots for 3 disks. If your storage needs expand beyond the capacity of 1 disk, then you need to scale up by the same ratio. A disk is indivisible - having two copies of the same data on a disk does not give you any redundancy value. (I won’t get into striping and mucking about with weird RAID choices in this post because it’s too long already, but basically it’s not worth it - the KISS principle applies, especially in small configurations)

This means you only get to use 25% of the storage capacity that you buy. Them’s the breaks. Anything less and you’re not taking your data longevity seriously, you might as well just get a consumer-grade external drive and call it a day.

Buy 4 disks, it doesn’t matter what they are or how much they cost (though if you’re buying used make sure you get a SMART report from the seller and you understand what it means) but keep in mind that your storage capacity is just 1 of the disks. And buy a server that can keep 3 of them online and automatically swap in the standby when one of the disks fails. Spend more money on the server than the disks, it will last longer.

Remember, long-term is a question of when, not if.