arclight

Engineer (nuclear, safety analysis), scientific software developer, rehabilitator of unloved FORTRAN, recovering sysadmin, marginally competent solderator. Occasional Bond Villain (Card Overpunch). Nuclear Scoundrel™

My internet claim to fame was livetweeting the Fukushima reactor failures on the Birdsite. I'm pretty chipper for one spending so much time looking at sad melty reactors and sad creaky software.

Fedi: arclight (npub15cc…uqn8)
GitHub: https://github.com/apthorpe
Birdsite: arclight (npub15cc…uqn8)

Public Key

npub15cc3msw9nppjswuu3lx4e63rtw6jspcpllvqgeyhmevlc3p50dlqrfuqn8

NIP-05 Address

arclight_at_oldbytes.space@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2vvgac8zesseg8wwgln2uag34hdfgquqllkqyvjtauk0ugs68klsprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddakk7um5wgh8q6twdvhsy4c7ep

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

relay.noswhere.com

Author Public Key

npub15cc3msw9nppjswuu3lx4e63rtw6jspcpllvqgeyhmevlc3p50dlqrfuqn8

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Last Notes

2024-11-06 17:37:22

Gracie says hi.
https://assets.oldbytes.space/assets.oldbytes.space/media_attachments/files/113/437/214/176/914/796/original/9a371c5529a98a0a.jpg

2024-10-10 18:23:12

White people are literally destroying my neighborhood.
https://assets.oldbytes.space/assets.oldbytes.space/media_attachments/files/113/284/519/777/893/141/original/5d181ccbb8c30f1d.jpg

2024-09-20 04:30:32

I just found out that the movie Cherry 2000 was set in 2017.
We had so many interesting apocalypses to choose from back in the 80s -- how did we get stuck with this one?

2024-09-16 19:38:21

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Curious how often one has to update its firmware. #NeedsMoreAI

2024-09-14 04:42:43

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I've spent decades trying to become less angry, to spend less of my limited time on this planet ranting about shitheads. For a while it was working. There is so much bad software everywhere, breaking things that weren't broken before, creating so much more broken complexity - so much of it is simply waste, stuff with negative value that people would happily pay to be rid of.
Waste.
But instead of winding up in landfills, it clogs up every interaction, burns up hours of effort and attention, finds ways to interfere with everything and just make it worse. And armies of amped-up coders fueled by hubris and adrenaline try "fix" things by sluicing out even more code. The answer is always more code. More code faster. Always Be Coding.
Or maybe just stop, just for a minute.
Reflect and start deleting what doesn't work, what's not finished, what isn't fit for purpose.

2024-09-14 04:27:11

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I'm not advocating for some exclusionary Vermont farmhouse artisinal Yankee Coding Workshop bespoke curated model of development. Just maybe stop taking so much literal or metaphorical speed and think before you inflict this shit on the rest of us.
Come to a complete stop, look both ways at the intersection, and proceed when it's safe to do so. I know, you have a giant fast murder pickup and it's heretical to drive below 75 mph anywhere ever. I know, you spent a fortune on that 2.5 ounce composite road bike and your spandex-compressed genitalia will drop right off if you break cadence.
Just show an iota of concern for those around you and come to a complete fucking stop at the intersection.
Instead, it's "my personal velocity is more important than anyone or anything in my path and fuck everything that gets in my way or slows me down or makes me divert from my intended path."

2024-09-14 04:10:28

I really wish I could constrain my rage against mobile apps and their "developers". I'm really not sure what the solution is beyond mass exsanguination. Too many people making too many applications with sleek unusable uninformative interfaces that simply don't work in any logical fashion. Too many framework developers building tools to speed up the development of shitty applications.
What passes for rapid development today is a mistake. We don't need garbage scows capable of Mach 2.
Nobody can think that fast and giving people tools that let them write code faster than they can think is a dangerous mistake. But we have the industrial ethic that overdriving your headlights is fine. Move fast and let God sort them out.

2024-09-12 05:05:14

I need a recommendation for a decent Matodon client on Android. I'm generally happy with Tusky but lately it's been losing posts mid-composition and hanging. The latter I can handle but losing posts in progress is a deal breaker. Something changed in the past month that's broken it, it doesn't seem to be marked as a bug, and I'm really tired of debugging other people's code.

2024-09-03 13:27:05

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Other C 'niceties' I don't miss are three-int-in-a-trenchcoat 'types'. Logical variables and ints aren't interchangeable, neither are character data and ints. `if (1) ...` is properly an error as is `int uc = 'a' - 'A';`. There's no need to memorize whether 0 is logical true or false when there's a hard distinction between numeric and logical types.
I see the value in those sorts of shortcuts if you come from an assembly or system programming background and if you're building a research tool instead of a production tool. That magic and looseness is deadly in application space where you expect types to be meaningful and you rely on the compiler to not let you do something nonsensical like log("tuba") or sin("pi over two")

2024-09-03 12:55:15

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Header files and the macro processor are two aspects of C-like languages I just despise, C++ header files in particular. Then again, I spend a lot of time in Fortran where declarations must occur before executable code (ignoring BLOCK constructs and compile-time expressions). The lack of templating and a preprocessor hurts when trying to write precision-independent functions but at least the equivalent of header files are auto-generated so maintaining consistency between .c and .h files isn't an issue. Lack of macros is nice since there's never a question of whether a function-like element is a real function or a Post-It note masquerading as a function. Nothing like trying to write a C/Fortran interface and constantly tripping over macros that need to be recoded in Fortran. I'm an application dev not a system dev so C has never been much use to me - too low level and fiddly. Dealing with Fortran also makes you sensitive to 50-year-old constructs that are modern misfeatures.

2024-08-26 21:52:53

Does anyone other than me remember TVs that just _worked_? Take them out of their box, plug them into the power outlet, maybe hook up an antenna or cable box or video game or computer and they showed you pictures and sound. Worst came to worse you needed to replace a tube and even then those had basically disappeared by the late 1970s. No updates, no EULAs, no subscriptions*. Weird times. https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/113030483231090134 #enshittification * to use** just the TV. Cable and satellite service sold separately.
** Offer not available in the UK (the TV license fee went to the state, not the TV manufacturer)

2024-08-26 14:35:57

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I'd vote winscp over Filezilla just based on the UI; winscp just seems more conventional and straightforward.

2024-08-26 14:35:57

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I'd vote winscp over Filezilla just based on the UI; winscp just seems more conventional and straightforward.

2024-08-22 13:12:39

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Fiendishly clever. We'd just mow the lawn and sneak the zucchinis into the compost pile and cover them with lawn clippings. Save one chonker for making a few loaves of zucchini bread as cover. Bonus points for pawning off the zucchini bread on the original perpetrator.

2024-08-22 12:56:32

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You are describing peak Wisconsin passive-aggressiveness - sneaking over to the neighbor's front porch in the dead of night to drop off a paper grocery bag full of immense zucchinis. They can't toss them (wasting food is a sin), they can't send them back (rude to reject a gift), and they can't 'regift' them to another neighbor (also rude). This is the origin of zucchini bread, a waste of effort, heat, and perfectly good flour repurposed into a social coping mechanism when living among drunks, cannibals, and Lutherans.

2024-08-13 19:11:24

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Is it really open source if end users can't build it from source? Containers, conda, etc are just different ways of saying the devs have lost control of their build process and have let it become brittle, byzantine, and effectively closed.

2024-08-02 15:48:08

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I'm sorry/you're welcome :)

2024-08-02 15:31:05

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"Josiah Whately and the Fuzziest Shuggoth" did not sell as well as Lovecraft had hoped...

2024-08-02 14:36:48

Gracie wants everyone to know she's STARVING and has never gotten ANY treats as long as she can remember. #CatsOfMastondon #FloofFriday
https://assets.oldbytes.space/assets.oldbytes.space/media_attachments/files/112/892/917/889/790/122/original/8355ce5a05efb491.jpg

2024-08-01 15:47:26

Status: Floof #CatsOfMastodon
https://assets.oldbytes.space/assets.oldbytes.space/media_attachments/files/112/887/537/960/317/974/original/b8ccf409a39c2106.jpg

2024-07-06 23:11:17

Shopping on Steam is like shopping in a bookstore with two shelves: bestsellers and books sorted by color. With so much voluntarily provided personal data (age, zip code, games you prefer) multiplied by a gazillion other users, it's criminal how bad their recommendations are. A literal random draw would be more likely to put something interesting in front of me than Steam's recommendation system. There is no way their game recommender is designed to help sell games. #FIFACallOfBaldursStarfieldSimulator2024

2024-07-03 18:09:55

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Overt Nazis should fear for their safety in public.

2024-06-26 17:24:55

Software developers are to software what land developers are to land.

2024-06-26 17:13:38

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The fight against #enshittification is constant, relentless, exhausting, and inescapable.

2024-06-26 16:58:11

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Update: Switching Alma 8 from WSL2 to WSL1 and back to WS2 seemed to have fixed it. What an utter shitshow.

2024-06-26 16:55:02

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Oh yay - my Alma 8 installation under WSL2 mysteriously stopped working on my personal laptop. Exported it as a tarball, switched it from WSL2 to WSL1 and it now boots. Switching it back to WSL2 to see if it's just a turn-it-off-turn-it-back-on problem with WSL.
I'm now curious if I can do all my important Windows-only functions (i.e. gaming) on a Steam Deck. This would solve a lot of Windows problems insofar as I could just stop using Windows.

2024-06-26 15:48:20

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I don't know if this is due to brainworms on the Arch team, brainworms on the MSYS2 project, or some weird superhybrid brainworms that evolved from the both of them. Honestly, I don't care. I just don't understand how you ship something this fucking unusable and sleep at night. Like, this a free software project - you don't have to spend the precious time you have on this planet inflicting this bullshit on others. You can just stop. Just stop.

2024-06-26 15:43:37

pacman makes me hate Arch Linux with a passion. It's the worst form of simon-says software, exacerbated by whatever batshit design decisions went into MSYS2.
No, I can't use WSL2 because IT paranoid authoritarianism and unwillingness/inability to communicate. Just pull the string on the toy Siamang gibbon and get the reflexive repeated howls of "NOOOOO! NOOOOO! NOOOOO!"
So I'm stuck with MSYS2 and it's unwillingness to explain which of the 17 different package prefixes is the one that will work on my hardware/shell/environment/whatever. I'm not trying to cross-compile anything - don't show me ARM packages and tell me clearly which of mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64, ucrt64/mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64, clang64/mingw-w64-clang-x86_64n etc is the package I need to install so that I can just start using it and get on with my real with instead of fucking around with your sadistic brain teaser of a package management system. Narrow it down because none of that prefix means jackshit to me NOR SHOULD IT.

2024-06-21 08:29:27

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TAKE THE JUNK MAIL.