fanf

fanf, 1 month ago to random

omg so big marshmallows that are sold for roasting are ingredients therefore get 0% VAT

and small marshmallows that are sold for baking are also ingredients therefore get 0% VAT

but medium sized marshmallows are just right for HMRC because they are sweeties and get 20% VAT

https://www.bgm.co.uk/insight/news/the-marshmallow-paradox-vat-or-no-vat
https://mastodon.flooey.org/@generalising/112322050845028555

fanf, 10 months ago to random

every so often someone reinvents “proof of work” for anti-spam

and i wheel out the evergreen link https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf

19 years old now! old enough to drink in civilized countries!

fanf, 3 months ago to random

wow

“The BRL-CAD source code repository is the oldest known public version-controlled codebase in the world that's still under active development, dating back to 1983-12-16”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-CAD

fanf, 1 year ago to random

on my blog!

https://dotat.at/@/2023-05-26-whence-time.html

"where does my computer get the time from?"

a blogified version of the lightning talk I gave at #RIPE86 this morning

fanf, 6 months ago to random

i’ve been following the news of the magma dike developing under Grindevík in the Reykjanes peninsula of Iceland

which has led to a bit of reading around about the geology and history of Iceland, eg, the Reykjanes peninsula is where the north atlantic ridge rises above sea level

i also found this magnificent documentary from 1970
https://youtu.be/rY9IL1F9aj8
about how the theory of plate tectonics was developed - it was only 2 years old when the documentary was made!

fanf, 4 days ago to random

reading about 50 years of sql

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/fifty_years_of_sql/

and the earth shifts beneath me as i realise in a few months there will be historical retrospectives of foundational technologies that are younger than me

(i am quite looking forward to the articles about vlsi tbh)

fanf, 10 months ago to random

i mentioned steve shirley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley this afternoon because she is amazing and more people need to know about her as a pioneer in software as a business and as a feminist trailblazer

embarrassed that i forgot she came to britain as a kindertransport refugee

we lose so much by rejecting people who come to us in need

fanf, 7 months ago to random

let’s say you (BASF) have a huge silo full of fertilizer 😱 that has got a bit damp and solidified, so you decide to use dynamite to loosen it 😱

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion

fanf, 2 months ago to random

https://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com/2020/11/building-anycast-secondary-dns-service.html - Building an anycast secondary DNS service.

fanf, 2 months ago to random

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/10/what-john-von-neumann-really-did-at-los-alamos.html - What John von Neumann really did at Los Alamos.

fanf, 1 month ago to random

2021 retro-link! https://mattferraro.dev/posts/caustics-engineering - Hiding images in plain sight: an acrylic magic window that can project a picture.

fanf, 1 month ago to random

https://coredumped.dev/2023/08/09/text-showdown-gap-buffers-vs-ropes/ - Text showdown: gap buffers vs ropes.

fanf, 1 year ago to random

not something that happens very often: b.root-servers.net is renumbering

https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2023-May/222296.html

they are getting new address space from LACNIC to diversify the number of RIRs that have allocated address space to root DNS servers

fanf, 9 days ago to random

vague memory of someone else’s debugging story from i can’t remember where … :

they are called to an office which is complaining that the wifi stops working for two hours twice a day

this office is in portsmouth so it’s fairly obvious that the timing is related to the tides

but what on earth? how can the wifi be sensitive to the tides?!

fanf, 28 days ago to random

on my blog!

https://dotat.at/@/2024-05-11-dnssec-policy.html

migrating to BIND9 dnssec-policy

after a good amount of experimenting i think i have a reliable recipe

revk, 5 days ago to random

Oh wow, that is going way too far!

[not my pic]

fanf, 24 days ago to random

https://b612-font.com/ - B612: the Airbus cockpit display font.

fanf, 20 days ago to random

https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

The best way to think of SLS is as a balding guy with a mullet: there are fireworks down below that are meant to distract you from a sad situation up top.

For eight minutes SLS roars into the sky on a pillar of fire. And then, like a cork popping out of a bottle, the tiny ICPS emerges and drifts vaguely moonwards on a wisp of flame.

[It is] a first in space flight, [a] rocket that is at the same time more powerful and less capable than the Saturn V.

fanf, 17 days ago to random

the water is also coming up through the ground under the tent! fortunately i have a large 16 rib umbrella and sufficiently waterproof boots

fanf, 5 days ago to random

2023 retro-link! https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/bcrypt-25-retrospective-password-security - Bcrypt at 25: a retrospective on password security.

fanf, 6 days ago to random

https://erikbern.com/2019/04/15/why-software-projects-take-longer-than-you-think-a-statistical-model.html - Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model.

fanf, 27 days ago to random

2022 retro-link! https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/is-wine-fake - Is wine fake?

fanf, 26 days ago to random

heh look what i just found in an old .bashrc

export CVS_RSH=which ssh

fanf, 1 month ago to random

enjoying SIGBOVIK

« In bogoceptionsort the source code for bogosort is bogosorted and then compiled, this then runs and checks if the array is sorted. If the array isn't sorted then the source code is scrambled again. The bogoception sort performs similarly to bogosort for large n but excels at smaller n and need orders of magnitudes more iterations for small n. »