bme's recent activity
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Comment on Help choosing a new linux computer? in ~tech
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Comment on What's a setting that you'd recommend? in ~tech
bme LinkNiche: but by default on Linux systemd-oomd does exactly nothing (verify with oomctl). The most casual setting is setting [Slice] ManagedOOMSwap=kill on the root slice -.slice. man...Niche: but by default on Linux systemd-oomd does exactly nothing (verify with oomctl). The most casual setting is setting
[Slice] ManagedOOMSwap=killon the root slice
-.slice.man systemd.resource-controlfor details. Maybe your distro does this out of the box but mine (NixOS) does not. -
Comment on What words do you recommend? in ~talk
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Comment on Should I take a job to work on something I don’t believe in? in ~life
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Comment on Should I take a job to work on something I don’t believe in? in ~life
bme Link ParentI recently had a candidate do this to me. We had stopped the search, he had a long notice period, and we were somewhat desperate for the hire. He pulled out 2 months after we made the offer and 2...I recently had a candidate do this to me. We had stopped the search, he had a long notice period, and we were somewhat desperate for the hire. He pulled out 2 months after we made the offer and 2 weeks before he was due to start. I was really annoyed by this and it has cost me materially in terms of time, and made some deliverables much harder to manage for the time being.
That said, the relationship is still asymmetric in favour of the hiring company, they can withdraw the offer for reasons, they can change the nature job before you join and long after, they can and often do lie about aspects of the work. Some of these behaviours may be strictly illegal but honestly what are you going to do about it? That's the game. You didn't make the rules and you have to look out for yourself. I don't hold anything against the candidate for screwing me over temporarily, because I reserve rights in my favour (mostly termination during probation), and I'd do the same thing in a heartbeat if I were being hired and a better role came up.
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Comment on The family computer in ~tech
bme (edited )Link ParentAll of this is true: I feel like we are watching the last death throes of the enthusiast pc space and with it probably most modularity repairability etc. The sector will continue to shrink, the...All of this is true: I feel like we are watching the last death throes of the enthusiast pc space and with it probably most modularity repairability etc. The sector will continue to shrink, the voting by wallet for appliances will continue, real computers in homes will disappear and unlocked hardware will probably only be for professionals paying a small fortune for eval boards.
I hope I am wrong. For instance, https://frame.work has been going for years and I still can't bring myself to make them the preferred supplier for my small eng team because there is absolutely no way I can afford to participate in pre order batches if I need a computer. So instead I am buying non-upgradeable crap from Lenovo (think pads). I'm not convinced they will hit scale. If they can't do it with a very compelling product, who will? I work on a charger (for EV) with a locked down proprietary protocol and no availability of schematics for third party repair. Does anyone care? No. The power supplies aren't socketed and when they fail that's it for the boards as far as the customer is concerned. We could change this but it would add significantly to the BOM of the product and no one wants to pay for it. I realised I am now massively off topic but this shit depresses me so much.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
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Comment on MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing in ~tech
bme (edited )Link ParentIt might be common but it's crazy. I guess if you are publicly traded to a degree you are at the whims of investors who care more about top line growth than bottom line efficiency. For privately...It might be common but it's crazy. I guess if you are publicly traded to a degree you are at the whims of investors who care more about top line growth than bottom line efficiency. For privately held businesses where it makes no difference where the money comes from, bottom line improvements are massive. Any effort spent here means that when rough times arrive you are prepared to weather them because you are lean and mean. You control how you deliver services, you can't control the addressable market for them or the broader economic context in which the market exists. Drives me crazy. It has been my first hand experience that being able to stay in the game longer because you are the leanest is far more valuable than how analysts and professional management seem to price it.
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Comment on Most people, even highly technical people, don't understand anything about AI in ~tech
bme Link ParentOne way to make the problem smaller will be to have better documentation for internal APIs. Basically the things we should have been spending time on to be kind to ourselves also in my limited...One way to make the problem smaller will be to have better documentation for internal APIs. Basically the things we should have been spending time on to be kind to ourselves also in my limited experience seems to yield a bit of improvement, but I haven't done enough experimentation to have a firm conviction. I've had a really good time with rust + aider when I can point at some docs and say: use the library documented by this page to do xyz. Our own internal code doesn't have great published docs. We skirt around this through code review and shared theory crafting in meetings. Which doesn't need to scale because we are still a very small team. AI isn't privy to this folklore, it has to hold the code to know what it does, blowing out the context.
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Comment on Most people, even highly technical people, don't understand anything about AI in ~tech
bme Link ParentI think that's fair, I also think this a perfect example of why I think AI impact is also enormously exaggerated across the board. As far as I have been able to ascertain AI does not give you all...I think that's fair, I also think this a perfect example of why I think AI impact is also enormously exaggerated across the board. As far as I have been able to ascertain AI does not give you all that much past a certain project size (let's say 10kloc).
We have a few codebases at work, at different sizes. On the smaller projects AI is magic. On the larger projects the general consensus is that prompting takes longer than typing the code. You let Claude rip and it doesn't know about your utils library, it doesn't know about existing dependencies, it will just pull in whatever, it will send itself into loops trying to solve diamond dependencies it created, it will just stub a function and forget about it.
Unironically I run a team of 10x devs (our footprint is less than a 10th of our peers in the industry) and we wanted AI to be a multiplier, and so far it's basically reduced to writing unit test skeletons and doing boring data transformations, and occasionally a bit of code gen (make me bitflags for the enum described on this page, etc). I have seen zero evidence in my own immediate peers or any industry peers working on 100kloc+ code bases (which is not even that big!!!!) of any fantastical real velocity improvements (i.e. features delivered per unit time, not lines of code produced). The whole game is context window management, and it's exhausting.
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Comment on Thousands of hotels in Europe to sue Booking.com over ‘abusive’ pricing practices in ~travel
bme Link ParentIt's a dream of mine to exit the business I'm in to do something like this (high-quality federated booking engine + front of house integration) that would be managed under the aegis of a b-corp or...It's a dream of mine to exit the business I'm in to do something like this (high-quality federated booking engine + front of house integration) that would be managed under the aegis of a b-corp or whatever the right vehicle is to try to put benefit to the public at the fore. It's insane how capable hardware is these days, the software is so lackluster comparatively.
(My mum works for a hotel franchise and the software story is ... not good)
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Comment on Thousands of hotels in Europe to sue Booking.com over ‘abusive’ pricing practices in ~travel
bme LinkGreat! Play monopoly games, win monopoly prizes. Booking sticks itself in the way for basically no gain. Booking direct with a hotel is always better, because booking isn't going to shit for you...Great! Play monopoly games, win monopoly prizes. Booking sticks itself in the way for basically no gain. Booking direct with a hotel is always better, because booking isn't going to shit for you in case of a dispute, and hotels tend to be much more flexible dealing directly with their own clientele. It's a shame large aggregators have done such a good job of sucking the air out of the room with their advertising spend and that most people are piss poor travelers (in terms of knowing how to get what they want).
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Comment on Tilde is kill? in ~tildes
bme (edited )Link ParentThanks for the hint. I had a 30 second glance at the ansible playbooks before bed. I'll have a real look on the weekend. EDIT: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/833Thanks for the hint. I had a 30 second glance at the ansible playbooks before bed. I'll have a real look on the weekend.
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Comment on Tilde is kill? in ~tildes
bme Link ParentYes! Assuming the gitlab code is up to date it would be easy enough to stick certbot with http-01 behind the nginx instance and run on a timer. I'd be happy to take this on if it was wanted.Yes! Assuming the gitlab code is up to date it would be easy enough to stick certbot with http-01 behind the nginx instance and run on a timer. I'd be happy to take this on if it was wanted.
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Comment on Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that in ~tech
bme Link ParentYou are complaining about libre office and Debian and claiming that the millions of man hours that have gone into providing an astounding commons has left you worse off than if it didn't exist....You are complaining about libre office and Debian and claiming that the millions of man hours that have gone into providing an astounding commons has left you worse off than if it didn't exist. That these developers are stealing your time from you.
You aren't bound by the caprice of some judge enforcing a EULA. I was quoting from the GPLv2, which exists to guarantee your freedom of access to software and rights to modify it.
I can and will make the argument all day long.
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Comment on Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that in ~tech
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Comment on Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that in ~tech
bme LinkOk. If you feel that someone is stealing your time by supplying you with free software, I would suggest you stop using it, and be freed from the burden of dealing with this constant theft.All I know is, someone has stolen 2 hours of my life from me, and I really want to know who that is.
Ok.
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
If you feel that someone is stealing your time by supplying you with free software, I would suggest you stop using it, and be freed from the burden of dealing with this constant theft.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
bme Link ParentIt's mostly that I thought I could do it without a really complicated xpath expression.It's mostly that I thought I could do it without a really complicated xpath expression.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
bme Link ParentI haven't forgotten this, I just realised the problem is more complicated than I thought to do from pure bash. I'll be back with something totally stupid later because I can't leave it alone.I haven't forgotten this, I just realised the problem is more complicated than I thought to do from pure bash. I'll be back with something totally stupid later because I can't leave it alone.
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Comment on How is Linux these days? in ~comp
bme (edited )Link ParentIf you want to tinker on your computer and that's interesting to you, have at it! If you are comfortable with installing OSes then let's be real, you could be back on windows 11 in 10 minutes in a...If you want to tinker on your computer and that's interesting to you, have at it! If you are comfortable with installing OSes then let's be real, you could be back on windows 11 in 10 minutes in a pinch with decent internet.
Linux these days imo is stellar. If you mostly play older non-AAA titles via steam then it's insane how seamless it has become.
Lastly my favourite thing about Linux is how small the kernel actually is, and how resilient it is to changes around it, because the drivers are in-kernel. You can transplant the disk almost anywhere and it will still boot when asked nicely. You can even do properly stupid stuff with a flexible enough filesystem like install a new distribution side by side without rebooting and switch root into the new one. All of the important configuration is simple and human readable / editable which means that when equipped with a decent usb boot environment you can save just about any mistake. I've been running the same ship-of-Theseus Linux installation for a decade or so across a distribution change without ever wiping anything and it still has that new computer smell internally because it's easy to audit. No black boxes, nothing hidden up a sleeve (ignoring firmware blobs and AMD PSP). It's great!
What kind of gaming, what kind of work? What budget? If you do decide to build your own, feel free to post the parts list here, I or many others I am sure would be happy to review it.
I ask about work / gaming because depending on the answer depends on where you want to direct your money (CPU Vs GPU).