penguin42

https://mastodon.org.uk/@penguin42

Chocolate eating computer geek, Manchester, UK
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Chocolate: Very dark
OS: Linux
Cake: More!
Education: PhD computer science

Public Key

npub1xm4cf2u3hk99z6saagj79kcfseup72kjn7n40ylknq4u387rqfnq2luvhk

NIP-05 Address

penguin42_at_mastodon.org.uk@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsrd6uy4wgmmzj3dgw75f0zmvycv7ql9tfflf6hj0mfs27gnlpsyespz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsxuc6yv

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Last Notes

2026-04-19 16:47:43 UTC

My NVME performance rabbit hole is confusing; one of my two identical drives is half the performance in hdparm -T; I swapped the drives in the slots and the performance follows the drive not the slot. PCIe looks fine with the same link speed/width. NVMe features (nvme get-feature /dev/nvme. -f 0 -H) are the same on both.
Oddly the *latency* is much lower on the slower drive?!! wtf?!

2026-04-13 20:52:13 UTC

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I wouldn't pay too much attention - it really is depressing!

2026-04-13 20:28:30 UTC

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I tend to look at https://understandingwar.org/ to track some of this.

2026-03-12 16:50:08 UTC

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I saw someone else describing using a separate set of AIs for the different tasks; they basically built a team; some writing a spec, some reviewing it, some managing the tasks and some coders, with some code reviewers etc - but they didn't have the formalisms.
Whether stuff will come back to be run locally as opposed to in a cloud is difficult to say; generally in computers there's a cyclic nature of whether stuff is remote or local (see Sutherland's wheel of reincarnation)

2026-02-25 01:57:43 UTC

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Some clocks in Hebrew clocks also run the opposite way, following the writing - but not all.

2026-01-29 22:59:37 UTC

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Are you sure - I see you're using a Ryzen? My Ryzen 3950x can do ECC; AMD ones often can - whether your motherboard can I'm not sure.
(I bought 2nd hand ECC server ram from a refurb company about a year ago; with ECC I'm less bothered about buying 2nd hand)
(It really feels like you should be able to draw a broken Ram)

2026-01-27 22:13:23 UTC

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are those tickets all booked by film reviewers?

2026-01-08 13:40:12 UTC

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There was an attack a few years back near here where they dropped burning rubbish into manholes around a a data centre; the theory at the time was it was to try and cut off some CCTV or alarm monitoring for something. Well caught!

2025-11-20 00:15:57 UTC

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Do you think your v2 pelican prompt is perhaps giving too many hints? The mention of 'must have spokes' and 'characteristic large pouch' feel a bit too much - I was wondering if something like 'must show the normal details of a bicycle' etc might be more challenging?

2025-10-28 01:12:49 UTC

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'labplot' is actually interesting now I've got it working; it's easily able to interactively plot a large graph with no trouble and interactively fiddle with it. It's also got a 'computational notebook' which I'd heard of but never played with before; it's quite neat - in the Python shell, creating any numpy variable appears in the GUI and then it looks like you can apply any of the graphing/analysis things to it.

2025-10-27 23:59:34 UTC

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Ooh I got it apparently working on Fedora 43 - it's got a dependency of 'qt6-qtbase(x86-64) = 6.9.1' but 43 has 6.9.2 ; installing all the dependencies and then installing that with a --nodeps and ... it seems to be working. hmm.

2025-10-27 22:56:00 UTC

hmm, I intended to try 'labplot' but am not getting anywhere; Fedora 43's package doesn't install. Debian trixie's seg faults on startup. It doesn't build from git on Fedora 43.

2025-09-29 13:34:26 UTC

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I guess you could ask NCSC to comment?
The individual councils (bexley etc) are probably impossible for anyone to push, but you'd think *someone* should be looking after justice.gov.uk

2025-09-25 11:48:48 UTC

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But was the cerebral haemorrhage caused by a wayward baseball?

2025-09-17 15:40:57 UTC

Anyone identify this bird? (Just seen in Manchester, UK). It looks way too small and ungainly for a heron, but moderately long neck. hmm.
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/115/220/375/025/375/525/original/7d6bb7f3098b10ad.jpg
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/115/220/375/025/720/823/original/d94a64d88b554cfe.jpg

2025-09-15 21:06:34 UTC

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The JLR one is tricky because their parent company is Tata Motors; so I'm assuming that using TCS is 'keeping it in the family' so feels more logical to them than to others. But I'm also confused, there's speculation that JLR lost it due to salesforce, so then is it entirely unrelated to TCS/outsourcing at all?

2025-09-12 16:01:33 UTC

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I probably agree, although it gets tricky - I think there are some examples where generative tools can be tricked into exposing some of the training data; now is that also true of the models in recognition/tracking systems?

2025-09-07 16:45:41 UTC

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How do you know it crashed? Did it silently stop sending updates or something more noticeable?

2025-08-31 11:45:44 UTC

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Yeh! Is there anything different about Jiangmen that makes it better for solving this matrix thing?
I kind of like the IceCube detector; it's a nice trick to avoid building so much!
https://icecube.wisc.edu/

2025-08-28 13:06:21 UTC

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Oh! The same Prince Rupert as the Prince Rupert drop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert_of_the_Rhine

2025-08-17 12:41:55 UTC

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I wonder if that stuffed one has any sequencable DNA?

2025-07-24 00:16:35 UTC

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Maybe @npub1gv2…tlwl might have some pointers? Although I don't think his blog has that much on coding output;
https://simonwillison.net/

2025-06-30 14:41:59 UTC

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I wonder if you can solve the priority problem by transcribing his basic idea and posting it somewhere

2025-06-17 15:53:23 UTC

#fluffy #birds time of year again; these (checks) Coot chicks are adorable.
#wildlife
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/114/699/492/989/637/955/original/51c9955b3506b0c5.jpeg
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/114/699/492/981/809/032/original/d0c41d414621d68b.jpeg
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/114/699/492/975/073/582/original/2b4c806c6b525447.jpeg

2025-06-09 23:32:38 UTC

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Well, that's the trick - it *is* a Linux VM

2025-05-31 22:37:46 UTC

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The full size models pelican is pretty good - isthat the first time a model has given you a background?

2025-05-21 14:32:28 UTC

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The one where dotnet-policy-service asks Copilot to agree to the CLA is fun:
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115732#issuecomment-2891990223

2025-05-18 21:51:54 UTC

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Does any metadata reach the model at all; e.g. the filenames or anything?

2025-05-09 12:26:57 UTC

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Oh! That drawing had me thinking it was real as well - wth didn't they just use that lovely photo of the real thing!

2025-05-05 18:57:04 UTC

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Do you think you could save on tokens by telling it 'only this area of the image changed' and just sending it a smaller section for subsequent frames?

2025-04-18 15:01:10 UTC

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My interest wasn't the actual segmentation, more the formatting of a PNG format stream.

2025-04-18 14:51:24 UTC

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Do you think it's doing that all in the AI side or an external PNG handler? If it's all AI side I'm curious which PNG features it's used.

2025-03-12 01:42:01 UTC

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how big does a spec of dust in the ring have to be to make it a moon?

2025-01-16 21:41:23 UTC

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Don't the menus slide up and down nicely from the bar at the bottom? I always thought it was really nice and cool when I saw it on HP (Hmmw as it Vue at the time?)

2024-12-31 01:47:34 UTC

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This feels like it's pretty much similar stuff covered in the recent PBS Space Time videos?

2024-12-25 18:42:56 UTC

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Pass them the sprocket holes, that'll calm them down.

2024-12-20 13:20:41 UTC

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I think this might be a 'fish eye'; with Xanthan Gum it's common and forms these gluey chunks, It sounds like essentially the same problem:
'Fish-eyes are agglomerates of partially hydrated powders. The tough outer layer prevents the complete wetting of particles within the interior. Once formed, they can be difficult to disperse and will float on the surface of the batch.'
https://www.quadroliquids.com/blog/dispersion-of-xanthan-gum

2024-12-19 16:57:54 UTC

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You have much better H&S signage and organisation than many large labs!

2024-12-18 12:31:10 UTC

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You can also use 'perf record' and analyse the data later with 'perf report' and a bunch of other tools. There are also some GUIs to examine that data; I'm told Firefox can produce a graphical view of that same data; see: https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./guide-perf-profiling

2024-12-13 17:07:58 UTC

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I inherited plenty of wire, but no drawers!
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/646/603/120/267/353/original/13b9e4e458ab71f7.jpg
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/646/603/174/720/643/original/dcd150b715f490b3.jpg
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/646/603/124/401/906/original/2c2baff89ab914f7.jpg

2024-12-02 18:30:53 UTC

#kde karp sounds relaly nice; GUI for rearranging and fiddling with PDFs:
https://invent.kde.org/graphics/karp

2024-11-11 17:50:19 UTC

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Yeh, but good luck if you decide you need to replace one of the middle diodes.

2024-11-11 17:47:42 UTC

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Resistors wouldn't necessarily work - remember it's a matrix; so we power up one row at a time; if it used resistor that would flow through your row and then back up columns to (a random number of resistors) on other rows so would then be dragged down by those back to 0 (assuming the other rows were pulled low).

2024-11-11 14:20:18 UTC

A while ago, I think it was [@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 ) that mentioned diode matrixes as old ROMs, I think with a picture of an old computer board.
The thing with Diode matrixes is you could make them yourself - here's one my dad made probably in the late 70's, holding morse code for his callsign and common phrases (probably a CQ etc) - I've not decoded it yet.
#retrocomputing #hamradio
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/464/745/618/718/263/original/1527fdcf98aa6020.jpeg

2024-11-08 22:00:30 UTC

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives#/media/File:Combined--Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png looks like it's pretty steady - just on the opposite side of the line we'd like.
Of course the UK low pass filter is the House of Lords.

2024-11-08 21:32:47 UTC

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Well that's closer to what we have in the UK; but then it wouldn't help here since both houses are majority Republican; fundamentally it's what people voted for not just at the presidential level.

2024-10-06 14:45:38 UTC

The most fun bit of deadcoding the #linux kernel is finding functions that *should* have been called; I've got confirmation of the 3rd one now of a patch many years ago that accidentally missed the calling site.

2024-09-25 01:38:02 UTC

Fun! The #genetics behind Romanesco Cauliflowers has been figured out:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/romanesco-cauliflower-fractal-spiral-genetics-biology

2024-09-17 22:51:23 UTC

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Hang on - can you explain why being further from the centre of the earth would make gravity weaker for you on an oblate earth, when the same oblateness means you have more mass between you and the centre of the earth?

2024-09-17 18:04:22 UTC

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So hmm, does that mean you can tell your latitude when you're stationary from the acceleration, even without having measurements of geographic differences?

2024-09-03 16:53:14 UTC

This is apparently a 'mint moth' - it's tiny, chilling out on cat mint in our garden.
#moth #wildlife
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/074/653/180/774/232/original/b3c0492fe5986b7e.jpg

2024-08-31 20:59:38 UTC

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Oh heck, you really couldn't have found a heavier case. Was that one of the x86 macs, so you just replaced the board?

2024-08-30 18:00:13 UTC

The patterns on the inside of this branch where it came off are fascinating; it's kind of torn around.
#lichensubscribe #tree
https://cdn.mastodon.org.uk/media_attachments/files/113/052/267/779/424/665/original/50cc29fe220bbf85.jpg

2024-08-28 16:41:13 UTC

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I wasn't as good putting them back together....

2024-08-20 13:41:10 UTC

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I'm glad you've bought this up - it's been a pet worry of mine for a while. To be fair I think cloud-connectivity is something that's hard to avoid for non-techies who want to be able to just control/check the solar systems via mobiles; there needs to be some standard about how to do this non-centralised.

2024-08-11 14:09:33 UTC

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Picard and Riker at El-Adrel, Confused.

2024-08-11 13:59:12 UTC

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But also we're listening to the aliens speaking in English; so it's translating the age as well as the pure language.

2024-08-05 21:02:06 UTC

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I hope we get Altavista back!