Janne Moren

HPC support engineer in Okinawa, Japan. Former neuroscientist, former programmer.

Photography, recreational programming and playing the sanshin are things I do.

Sweden, Osaka and Okinawa are places I particularly care about.

Fosstodon: https://hub.fosstodon.org/team

Public Key

npub1gm3u5z77fpeprpeftne9sp3fnjx6fag69r6wxnvdgzxtmz2mdwkqm3k3wn

NIP-05 Address

jannem_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsydc72p00ysus3su54eujcqc5eerdy75dz3a8rfkx5pr9a39dkhtqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsucqx0e

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Last Notes

2026-04-30 07:41:02 UTC

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Report them. We clean them up when we find out about them.

2026-04-28 01:50:15 UTC

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Send it back without a review, noting it as incomplete?

2026-04-13 04:52:55 UTC

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Really cool!
But also: Why does it have an Abstract; *and* a Summary Paragraph; *and* a Significance Statement?
Isn't that just saying the same thing three times?

2026-03-31 07:35:02 UTC

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You found a job there? That's certainly on the more exotic side of Japan.

2026-03-28 06:56:46 UTC

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You know, I'm in my fifties. And over the past 40 years I've gone from a liberal centrist to a socialist radical, without changing my opinions.

2026-03-24 10:53:24 UTC

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I'm a specialist with a PhD, but working in the cheapest area in the country, for a publicly funded employer. For me, €1300 is around two weeks salary. Had I been working in Tokyo for a private company this might be one week.
So yes, it sounds quite spendy, especially for an institution that is publicly funded.
If it'd been something that translates directly to an income stream for the client the calculation is of course different.

2026-03-14 08:48:28 UTC

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But also, on Mastodon it really completely depends on who you follow. There's no mixing in of new people so if you follow mostly a certain kind of tech people you'll get a lot of the same opinions over and over.
I try following more of a mix, including a lot of hashtags (they bring in more different opinions and viewpoints).

2026-03-11 01:44:05 UTC

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The pilot project was announced in February 2022. And there's no news or coverage at all after that initial announcement. Presumably it never worked and was quietly canceled.

2026-03-05 05:41:50 UTC

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I want to donate (and have wanted to for a while) . Bank transfer isn't really practically doable for me; I wish they'd be open to accepting credit cards.

2026-02-28 04:11:57 UTC

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hmm, tempting.

2026-02-28 04:06:41 UTC

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That looks pretty usable. How did you get hold of 17? Is there a beta program?

2026-02-19 03:48:10 UTC

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In my experience Ubuntu has become much better at keeping up than they used to. The LTS releases update drivers through hardware enablement kernel updates. And they keep the graphics and sound stacks fairly well updated these days.
I don't know how closely Mint tracks the Ubuntu LTS updates though.

2026-02-04 14:08:40 UTC

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It looks to me the top links is from an NPO that collects and promotes open data for Okinawa.
The bottom links are aggregators that collect such data from all over the country.
Public transport is all run by private companies here, so there's probably no single "official" collection point for an area anywhere.

2026-02-04 13:59:34 UTC

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Here's a GTFS data site for Okinawa, Japan.
https://www.ottop.org/gtfs-opendata
And here's an API endpoint:
https://swagger.ottop.org/

2026-02-03 22:06:07 UTC

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Man ska absolut inte skratta åt hur folk råkar se ut.
Men ibland är det vansinnigt svårt att låta bli.

2026-01-30 04:26:51 UTC

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So, a night at a Japanese hospital, in a private room, with various examinations (brain MRI, heart ultrasound, blood tests, ECG, and so on) cost me 40k yen (about $270 for US people).
I'll get some back from the country, another bit from insurance, and there's a total yearly limit over which I'd not pay anything. And if I didn't have money, the country would cover it all.
Japan has lots of issues but the medical system tends to work quite well.

2026-01-29 23:07:50 UTC

Hospital fun! After five very busy days of SC/HPCAsia and catching a cold the last day, I fainted during dinner at home.
So now I've spent the night at a hospital while they rule out any serious cause to the fainting. Most likely it was just due to exhaustion and an infection.

2026-01-22 03:08:13 UTC

#Linux question: What's a good way to mirror a single #terminal session across two windows? Or show the same terminal on both the internal and external screen?
I use this when teaching. So far I start a tmux session and join with two terminals, one on the big external screen and one on my laptop screen. But the terminal sizes don't automatically match, the "remote" one gets a shaded-out cursor, and it's too easy for me to accidentally break during the session.
Any better ideas out there?

2026-01-10 00:49:20 UTC

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Has any member other than the US invoked the mutual defence clause?

2026-01-01 23:36:33 UTC

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A nice part of this kind of computer science is that the problem can often have an immediate real-world impact. Find a faster (practical) method for multiplying matrices (or svd, or whatever algorithm) and suddenly a lot of code runs faster than before.
It's like solving a math puzzle that's not just fun but actually helps other people.

2025-12-31 21:59:12 UTC

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I do! My wife, on the other hand...

2025-12-25 11:46:05 UTC

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The contrast is so compressed in modern phone cameras that they no longer look real. I get it - that's how you still get a clear, bright view of your mom's face even though she's standing in shadow with her back against the sun. And that's what most people want.
They're very good at recording a scene. But they're no longer good at creating pictures.

2025-11-25 09:11:16 UTC

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Use "frequency" to assemble the data.
Basically, it's "frequency(data, range)" where "data" is your column of data, and "range" is a column with the class limits you want. You get the numerical count for all of them, and can then plot them any way you like.
Look up an example online - it's easier to do than to describe.

2025-11-25 08:59:29 UTC

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"Bar chart" is the same thing, with a different name.

2025-11-25 08:46:32 UTC

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Of course both Libre Office and Excel has histograms.
Or did you miss an /s in your post?

2025-11-25 02:47:24 UTC

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Snaps are fine. It's similar to flatpacks and other containers; they all have their pros and cons. Early on snaps were quite slow to start, but that's been fixed these days.
It's fair to say arguments against snaps these days is either about licensing - the Ubuntu-run store isn't open source - or part of a general anti-Ubuntu sentiment (mostly because they are the largest distro).

2025-11-22 08:21:23 UTC

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Good thing about Okinawa is it's comparatively cool in summer. And up on the roof, in the shade and a breeze from the ocean, is pretty nice even in the middle of summer. They have a beer garden here most summers.

2025-11-22 05:13:02 UTC

If you want a quiet spot to sit outside in the middle of a japanese city, the big department stores usually have a rooftop garden or similar, and they're often underused.
This is the roof of Palette Ryubo in Naha. There's a fair number of people around, but it's a big space, and full of greenery so it feels like you have the space to yourself.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/115/591/630/127/275/645/original/e74c258f2a185be6.jpg

2025-11-21 07:07:32 UTC

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Jag kommer ihåg när folk klagade på att whiteboards var ett hajpat, värdelöst substitut till riktiga svarta tavlor med krita.

2025-10-16 03:49:31 UTC

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Feels like "We want to get out of this failed product category but don't want to do a Google in public. So we nominally support it for another couple of iterations before quietly dropping it."

2025-10-14 06:28:09 UTC

Japanese #politics : New #Komeito has been a junior coalition partner with LDP for *decades.* Affiliated with a Buddhist sect (it's complicated), and nominally pacifist; the question has been if there any line they would not cross in order to stay in power as a junior coalition partner.
We now know there is, and that line is Sanae Takaichi, the new hard-right LDP leader.
1/3
#japan #SanaeTakaichi

2025-10-06 03:51:34 UTC

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Weird. For me this post:
https://fosstodon.org/@npub1x59…gect/115312478447962339
just will not work when viewed from my Fosstodon account, from the web view or from the app ("This post cannot be displayed as you are not authorized to view it.").
If I go to mastodon.social directly (no account) I see it just fine.

2025-10-05 06:57:01 UTC

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First one looks fine. Second one fails.

2025-10-04 22:47:30 UTC

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Your quote post appears correctly. Terences does not (I don't have permission, is the message on web).
Edit: we run 4.4.5 so we're up to date.

2025-10-03 23:03:57 UTC

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We'll get there, I'm sure.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/115/312/726/581/528/802/original/de22e23c7597e6b3.png

2025-09-09 06:21:02 UTC

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Dit sätt att visa (höga) dagspriser som jämförelse med ett långtidsmedelvärde är ohederligt.

2025-09-09 06:00:41 UTC

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SE4 hade 57/Kwh i medel under 2024. Din graf har 80/Kwh för kärnkraft.

2025-09-08 21:50:34 UTC

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Så mellan dubbelt så mycket och fyra gånger mer än medelpriset över 2024. Låter stendumt.
Och att jämföra ett årsmedelpris med timpriset under ett par dagar är antingen för att du är helt okunnig om statistik; eller för att du avsiktligt försöker vilseleda folk. I vilket fall betyder det att dig ska man inte lita på i några diskussioner.

2025-08-31 00:02:09 UTC

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It's fiction, meant to entertain. Most "hard sf" is also impossible in some way or another if you start looking closely. I'm happy to give any author at least one pass for anything impossible, highly improbable, or factually wrong when it's in the service of making a story fun and compelling.
And sf has never been the go-to genre for deep, introspective character portraits or meditations on the human condition. It's fine; the world is the main character anyhow.

2025-08-14 07:07:58 UTC

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I trust a national government a lot more than some private crypto bros. Steam and Itch's problem is precisely that the credit card systems are run by private companies, not by a government that can be mandated to give equal access to legal products.
And if we're in a situation where we can't trust our government enough to use their payment system, how to pay for stuff is going to be the least of our problems. Bitcoin is not going to help.

2025-08-14 06:47:10 UTC

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You don't need Bitcoin for a cashless society. We already have electronic money in the form of bank transfer systems, credit cards, app payment systems and so on. Bitcoin is a pointless distraction.

2025-08-13 06:58:34 UTC

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No problem then. The final image won't be as wide as the one you posted. I'd pick the left, with the same overall visual balance as the example you just showed.

2025-08-13 06:36:30 UTC

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Standing up feels more appropriate. But you'd need to fill part of that space, perhaps (good place for a headline?).

2025-07-30 01:33:58 UTC

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The book is available. The discount is not.

2025-07-28 21:07:15 UTC

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Not on Kobo (or at least, not when you shop from Japan)...

2025-07-25 08:21:36 UTC

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You could get an account with us on Fosstodon.
But I'm not quite sure I understand what your goal is? It sounds like you want Mastodon, except ..not?

2025-07-24 00:03:19 UTC

Mastodon is going to start asking for donations. This is a good thing! A solid financial situation is critical for the project to work in the long run.
Also remember that your instance also costs money and time to run. And there's no advertising here to pay that cost. Donate to your instance if you can!
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/07/a-nudge-to-fund-our-future/

2025-07-23 14:00:10 UTC

You see those white circles going from right toward upper left? That's the probable path for #Typhoon 7. Those other circles going upwards from the bottom? Most likely typhoon 8 in another day or so.
That area where the two storms kind of intersect? Yeah, that's where we're going on #holiday tomorrow...
#Okinawa #yonaguni
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/902/892/167/790/551/original/b8fcd116060d74ce.png

2025-06-21 01:59:57 UTC

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I think it's for much the same reasons car interfaces are stable (or the qwerty layout is dominant): it's good enough, and the cost of retraining the world far exceeds the benefits of alternative interfaces.
We may well have new kinds of devices supplanting the PC in the future - the phone arguably already did, if only partially. But the PC (and the keyboard and the car and the phone) will keep its gestalt.

2025-06-21 01:12:50 UTC

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The desktop computer matured as a platform by the late 90s to early 2000s and has been stable (stagnant) since. Much like the car driving experience stopped becoming fundamentally different once the user interfaces stabilized.
Smartphones have arguably stabilized in the same way since about 2012 or so, and is similarly unlikely to ever change significantly again.

2025-06-19 12:12:34 UTC

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I imagine a lot of other labs are doing new studies in this vein already.
A lot of labs are "method labs" that have expertise in a specific method or technique ("fMRI all the things!") and this is a really obvious target for them.

2025-05-27 05:00:30 UTC

Any #Linux #kernel ,
#graphics or #GPU people out there?
I'm trying to understand the relationship between the #amgdpu driver shipped with the kernel; and the "andgpu-dkms" driver that comes with #ROCm .
Specifically, with a recent enough kernel, do we really need to install the ROCm version of the driver? Does the ROCm version contain stuff the general driver does not? Or is the ROCm stack (esp. libhsa) tightly tied to a very specific version of the driver?

2025-05-19 01:53:32 UTC

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Is that the Fuji kit zoom lens?

2025-05-15 07:04:28 UTC

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There's no accounting for field-specific terminology. In astronomy, for instance, anything that is not hydrogen or helium is a metal.

2025-05-14 08:15:31 UTC

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Should keep a roof over your head.

2025-05-12 14:02:19 UTC

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True, kind of. But you can sort of see him - and the standing man isn't all there either, just most of his legs.
I'd count either both or neither.

2025-05-12 13:46:36 UTC

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At least two humans, to be clear, and one of them decidedly not bourgeoisie.

2025-05-09 05:38:10 UTC

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You don't need anyone to shuffle off this mortal coil for a teaching position to become potentially available 😋

2025-05-09 05:30:19 UTC

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Getting a teachers license would be an obvious career step.

2025-05-09 05:15:26 UTC

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See if you can get some useful work training. I tried to get into a welding course when I was unemployed after my PhD but they seemed to think I'd already spent enough time in school.

2025-05-04 08:39:03 UTC

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Never underestimate a news writers ability to mangle science. With that said, the whole thing did read mighty suspicious, even as a mathematical amateur.

2025-05-03 23:53:10 UTC

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Nope. Especially research is by its nature largely in person.

2025-05-03 03:58:26 UTC

FYI, if you happen to be a scientist in a large English-speaking country with uncertain future research financing; my employer, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) is looking for grad students, postdocs and PIs.
It's a research institute, so no undergraduates, and the working language is English - no japanese required. And its located on a (semi) tropical island in the Pacific.
https://www.oist.jp/careers?f%5B0%5D=oist_job_type%3A819
#NSF #OIST #Japan

2025-04-25 21:57:40 UTC

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Go to Osaka for spring holiday. Drink good coffee, bicycle around town. Probably go to Expo 2025 since we got tickets.

2025-04-19 12:23:06 UTC

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Not quite.
We decided to get married. We then saw a ring she liked a lot, so I bought it for her as her engagement ring. We got married.
She only has the engagement ring (it's a memento, really; she never wears it). I have no rings at all.

2025-04-19 12:18:51 UTC

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This is *completely* in the hands of you and her. Nobody else. Whatever you decide to do is right for you.
I got my wife an engagement ring well after I'd proposed, because we both felt it was a nice tradition and we'd seen a ring she really liked.
But, we never got wedding rings when we got married. Neither of us particularly like wearing rings every day so we skipped that part.

2025-04-12 01:13:19 UTC

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Where are you going to host it?

2025-03-31 01:24:24 UTC

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Cool Biz is from 2005, well before the earthquake. And I vaguely remember there being a similar but less publicized effort before that (with an unfortunate image of an official in a badly designed short sleeve, short pants suit).

2025-03-22 07:03:25 UTC

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Concert with Dreams Come True.

2025-03-16 12:19:31 UTC

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Same thing with the ARM controller sitting inside my keyboard. True, it does need to do both usb and Bluetooth; still, even the smallest, slowest Cortex m0 is really *way* overkill for the job.

2025-03-16 08:25:28 UTC

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This is a Macintosh (the original) emulator. It emulates the CPU, video hardware and floppy disk (partly) well enough that you run the original OS and applications on it.
And it runs on a Raspberry Pico ARM microcontroller meant to turn on lights, read sensors and control toys.
https://github.com/evansm7/pico-mac

2025-03-11 08:28:51 UTC

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The university is part of what this is meant to alleviate in the long term. Along with the substandard public transport and other issues.

2025-03-11 07:45:25 UTC

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Our university is in a rural area because it was funded with government money, and one goal was to place it in an area that otherwise has very little in the way of knowledge work.
So you live close to your job and need a car to get to stores and schools. Or you live in a more urban area and need a car to get to work.

2025-03-09 06:33:15 UTC

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Took the bicycle to Naha, where I tried a new (to me) coffee shop and had lunch at a Shanghai-style noodle place. A nice day out.

2025-03-05 07:26:01 UTC

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I'm waiting for a phone manufacturer to take the next step where the "case" is integrated and necessary, and you effectively have user- or store-replaceable shells, with the frame and components exposed without one.

2025-03-02 07:32:09 UTC

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Nextcloud är webbaserat. Problemet är väl mest att få ett UI som faktiskt är användbart på både telefon och dator.

2025-02-26 23:27:36 UTC

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Is getting a new department or faculty position easier if you have had one or more large grants already?
Grants are kind of like a degree - or like being married - in that it shows somebody (presumably competent) already vetted you and found you competent.

2025-02-26 21:51:52 UTC

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Probably because having a big grant is in itself a highly valuable marker of competence; arguably more significant than the papers.

2025-02-24 09:28:40 UTC

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In my current job as HPC user support I love meeting researchers to help them get their work done on our systems. I enjoy writing the documentation, and I really enjoy teaching HPC fundamentals, Python programming and so on.
I never really enjoyed helping colleagues or teaching beginners as much when I was a working scientist. Probably because none of it had any value to future employers, and any time I didn't spend building my publication list was seen as a waste of time.

2025-02-18 13:29:44 UTC

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Photos really hit differently when printed and framed.

2025-02-12 11:44:07 UTC

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Pretty consistently 7.5 hours a night. So much so I wonder if I even need an alarm clock any longer.

2025-02-10 00:21:42 UTC

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I've been to Paris twice. A mixed experience - the good food is all Lebanese or Algerian; try japanese food only if you're tired of life.
But two decisions made the stay immeasurably better: we visited the Museum of Natural History; and we never strayed within sight of the Louvre or its crowds.

2025-02-08 22:58:42 UTC

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Multiprocessing is the standard library for doing this.
For running across nodes there's also mpi4py but that's usually overkill.

2025-02-01 02:00:51 UTC

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Finally, intelligence is not magic. You can't wish a solution into existence by thinking hard enough. No amount of thinking will let you break the laws of nature. An ancient Greek genius - or machine intelligence - couldn't have discovered relativity. The data, knowledge and tools didn't exist.
A superintelligence looking at climate change may conclude that there is no technical solution; our best bet is to quickly reduce emissions, decrease our energy use and share resources more equitably.

2025-02-01 02:00:14 UTC

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Third, we have direct observational evidence that high intelligence doesn't confer power or influence, good or bad.
Take a look around: all the most powerful people today and in the past are by and large very average. A few are pretty smart, a few are dumb as rocks. Most are mid. None became powerful due to their vast intellect.
They *do* tend to have high social skills (and inherited wealth). The ability to manipulate/motivate people does give you power. Intelligence does not.
(3/4)

2025-02-01 01:59:37 UTC

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Second, we don't know that intelligence is unbounded even in principle. We don't even agree on what intelligence *is,* but most would say something like the ability to discern patterns, or finding hidden connections. But you can't expose patterns that don't exist, or unearth connections that aren't there.
Get too good at finding patterns and collections, and you start hallucinating patterns and connections that were never there; falling into pareidolia, conspiracy theories and nonsense.
(2/4)

2025-02-01 01:58:50 UTC

So I have a few problems with a certain kind of #AI fanboy claiming "AI will become hyperintelligent and solve all our problems!".
I have the same problems with AI doomsday preppers warning "AI will become hyperintelligent and kill us all!"
First, we're training #LLM s on, basically, all of human output. You're training it to mimic the reasoning patterns and strategies of the average internet user. There's no reason to believe that can create hyperintelligence.
(1/4)

2025-01-29 22:12:12 UTC

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Quick feedback after all of ~1min of play (need to go to work):
1. Asking "are you sure" when choosing "new game" for the first time is odd. I thought I had hit a "quit" button by mistake.
2. I managed to get trapped between a bird and some other creature in the wood platform area, and glitched out of the playing field and down into the black void below. It detected and killed me so it's fine, but interesting nevertheless :)

2025-01-23 22:12:45 UTC

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Do I misunderstand the question? The distribution is completely determined by those two values, so you can get the right value for any point you like. I must misunderstand this.

2025-01-20 05:22:11 UTC

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You don't have a choice. Trying to write for their current interests will just give off heavy "hello fellow kids"-vibes.

2025-01-17 00:25:12 UTC

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How does the machine work for you in practice? Is it useful as a general tool, not just for playing with?
I kind of want one, but I've been burned before by projects with too many issues that hobbled them in practice.

2025-01-12 01:23:10 UTC

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FYI mastodon.sweden har fel länk i listan.

2025-01-11 00:07:28 UTC

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Vi använder Mattermost internt. Okej, men samma problem: dom vill gärna att vi ger dom pengar på något sätt.

2025-01-07 10:59:06 UTC

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In part because Because one of the few positions that demand a PhD in the humanities is teaching PhD students in the humanities.
To be fair, it's pretty competitive in academia with a science degree too. I never realized at the time how lucky I was, to be able to get a series of post-docs and staff scientist positions.

2024-12-31 08:58:25 UTC

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Final round of shopping for tonight; lunch; and now enjoying some Taiwanese winter tea I got from a colleague. With, I have to say, a *very* extensive explanation of how it should be brewed. 😄
Tonight we'll just have a hot pot and some random cheese, crackers and the like.

2024-12-29 06:50:38 UTC

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Going to see basketball, with Ryukyu Kings playing against Kyoto. Should be fun!

2024-12-27 00:37:27 UTC

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Maybe because it feels like you're intruding when you ask questions at a simpler level than the subject. There's usually an expectation that you contribute to the conversation at the same level as the post.
You see this offline too - people are deathly afraid to ask basic questions in a seminar. You may look ignorant or foolish, and you're interrupting a high level discussion. Usually only senior people have the confidence and status to ignore that and barge ahead.

2024-12-26 02:48:03 UTC

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I suspect they wouldn't be able to use that speed in anything but a very high vacuum, hot or not. Anything more than a few stray molecules would (I guess) start breaking the craft.
Edit: he mentioned ~1KW of energy per m² from the surface. You would apparently not even feel it if you were exposed to it.

2024-12-26 02:44:32 UTC

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The latest episode of Ask A Spaceman covers this. It's such a high vacuum that very little energy is transferred. It's only the (directional) radiation from the sun that's an issue.

2024-12-18 13:19:06 UTC

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COVID was a major sea-change here in Japan. Before, any kind of remote work was just about unheard of. Even flextime was mostly places like universities or new industries.
Today, partial remote is a fairly common option, and full remote is an actual thing.