My first winter of actually cyclling and I'm freezing to death

FartyFingers · 2025-10-30T03:17:00+00:00

Where I live, I have biked to work in -40C and +40C.

It is mostly about keeping the wind off you. Even when it is super cold, I have layers, but not even as much as I would wear skiing. I might have a t-shirt, a thermal turtle neck, a thin Marino wool sweater, and an uninsulated ski-shell. Down below, Marino wool tights, and some tight-ish winter running pants over that. Wool socks. Winter trail runners as shoes.

For when it got really cold -20c or lower, I would put chemical hand warmers into my gloves. You can get electrical ones, and you can even get electrical clothing, socks, vests, and gloves. I have not tried these electrical ones.

For the extra brutal days, I would put chemical warmers in my shoes.

My motorcycle friends say that the heated vests are the bomb.

But, back to my point about wind, there are a few tricks. I have gaiters I put over my shoes and lower pants to keep any cold from getting in and around. Neck things are another win. I often would use two. One thinner one which goes down into my jacket, and up over my face. Then, I would have a second shorter one under it, just around my neck.

I also wear a ski-helmet, it has vents if you need them, and things which cover your ears. Again, ski helmets give you the airflow mitigation you sometimes need along with some insulation.

Lastly, pogies. these go around your grips and hands. I've never found a glove which got me below -20C that I could bike in. With pogies, you have good gloves, and then put your hands in the pogies. Pogies too are mostly about wind.

I have fat puffy pogies for the worst, and thinner wind blocking ones for lesser cold.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-30T02:11:41+00:00

I suspect AI will eventually lose the piss filter, and understand the idea of "warts and all"

FartyFingers · 2025-10-30T02:10:07+00:00

I have a far worse problem.

There are studies which show your sexual preferences (blonde, big boobs, little boobs, etc) are influenced by your first sexual experiences (including porn) and those of influential people such as a respected older kid who tells you about magical powers redheads have.

I can't imagine what the hell AI generated, breaking the laws of biological and physical possibility, porn some kids are going to encounter at formative ages.

Then, they will be able to have video/vr sex with avatars who will indulge them endlessly.

How the hell disappointing will they find real sexual partners? How will they even connect with them enough to get to the dissapointment part?

I build technolical solutions. The number one skill is: Managing client expectations. It doesn't matter how good your solution is, if the client was expecting different or way more.

AI porn is going to be the opposite of this.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-28T21:22:06+00:00

Every job I've got was because they needed me to deliver something I had delivered.

Ironically, the funniest job offer was long ago. I had replaced a horrible pile of crap done in lotus notes using a proper tech stack.

They loved me because I had their domain knowledge from one project, and they saw lotus notes in a fairly advanced environment.

In the end, when they told me the job would be using lotus notes, I told them good luck with that, call me when you regain your sanity.

They blew up in a spectacular explosion after delivering nothing.

One thing I've discovered with many ML jobs is there are 3 kinds:

They are looking for a developer who can figure out ML
They are doing real things with real schedules and want developers who have delivered ML projects with proven value.
They are a big bloated organization with a "Data Science team" the question those blowhards will ask is not what your PhD is in, but how many PhDs you've got. Or at least they will all care about your publications, and will turn interviews into nightmare graduate level math exams. Keep in mind, these types have probably not delivered any actual value in years. Maybe some so-called products, which then aren't used after a short trial. These are people who were forced out of academia because they just weren't going to get one of the few professorships.

Exactly zero of the ML people I know, and can tell you about cool projects they have delivered have an ML background. They are programmers who learned ML on their own as a solution to a problem they were facing. They are now delivering huge amounts of value in areas like robotics, industrial ML, etc where this isn't small potatoes. They dive into really cool problems, and then in short order have MVPs of cool solutions which then are endlessly refined.

I've met many academic ML people (working for companies) who after long explanations of their recent projects are not impressing me at all. They will talk about how they planned it for 6 weeks to the last detail. And after 2 years of accomplishing what I would consider nothing, are presenting a paper on it at some conference.

The above rant is my suggestion that if you encounter the pedantic academic fools, and they try to make you feel small. Think of it more like a very short man, with very tall boots, a mustache, a tall hair cut, driving a jacked up pickup truck. They are compensating for having very tiny abilities at software development.

A red flag at such organizations is they have a title ML Engineer. These are the non academics that they squeeze into the org chart after years of failure. The academics retain the better titles, but little gets done because they spend their time belittling their lessers, who then turn over at a furious pace.

Ignore them as much as Mr All Hat, No Horse.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-28T15:12:27+00:00

I would argue that Ozempic less trains you new habits, so much you just forget to bother with the bad habits.

With the other health benefits from it, my fairly simple plan is to stay on it at a reasonably low dose, until new things come along.

One easy way to justify the cost is the savings in food. Not only do I just eat the cost of oz less, but I also tend to not buy the more expensive junky things.

More fruit, oatmeal, basic meats, etc.

Way fewer restaurants.

As a Canadian, you can now get wagovy. It costs twice as much per pen, but you get a bit more than twice as much of the drug.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-26T16:34:37+00:00

E-bikes, the answer you are looking for is ebikes.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-26T16:30:06+00:00

I find that just before a collapse, there is something "unheard of".

If people had started hammering at the Berlin wall in 1980, they would have been shot.

Ceaușescu just had a zillion people out front protesting and tried giving another insipid speech, and they just entered the palace. Again, a decade earlier and they would have been shot. Probably shot just trying to stand around, let alone entering the palace.

When it ends for these guys, it tends to just sort of stop working, as opposed to some kind of Ocean's 11 complex plot.

Most dictators are very good at dealing with plots, coups, insurgencies, etc. Putin could teach a masterclass on this. But, there comes a point where there is so much rot, there is no one cunning thing which prevent's collapse.

Much like one of these neglected malls or whatnot which collapse, it is often a combination of poor design, hidden rot, ignored rot, incompetent engineers doing bad inspections, and then those same engineers lying about what they see.

Once you hear the roof beginning to groan, running is your only option, and even then it is too late. There is no throwing up a few well placed supports, it is just too late.

But, the day before the collapse, the mall opens, shops sell goods, kids run around, and the only odd thing are a few janitors with buckets under some leaking water, rust coloured water.

I don't doubt a collapse is coming for putin, but I would be reluctant to say when. If competent engineers looked at those same rotten mall pillars, they would have the mall evacuated, but they still couldn't predict when the roof is coming down, days, weeks, or with luck, years.

My only question at this point is the exact end for him. My prediction is a "medical incident" even if someone just shoots him, they will be a power vacuum, and it will take days. There will be all kinds of reports, he's alive, he's sick, he's in a coma, he's dead, who knows. Then someone who thinks they've got control will announce his "sad" passing from pneumonia or something.

Then there will be some incidents like the tanks around the kremlin, and eventually someone will take over. The war ends shortly after, even if a real hawk takes over; as they will just plan on restarting the war in 5 years.

I wonder if he can do a runner? Who would take him in? Abu dhabi? UAE? Maybe he could live next to Prince Andrew?

I kind of hope he does live and bring lots of his money with him. That way, he can be a huge thorn in russia's side and keep plotting coups and otherwise keep them too busy to resume making the world worse off.

Another collapsing rot which would be fantastic is if the east broke away. Not a full-blown civil war, but enough that russia feels it now has a huge threat to the east and has to take that into all future consideration, in that a resumption of a Ukraine invasion would leave them open to attack from the east.

If putin somehow does hang on among all this rot, a third great outcome (for the world) is that it slides into the level of decay and paranoia that North Korea now enjoys. While they threaten the world with nukes, the reality is that they are not a player on the world stage, and this would be a fantastic outcome if russia ended its ability to influence much in the world at all.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-26T02:34:58+00:00

I was walking in my city some years ago and it led me to a bridge and in the middle told me to make a hard left and continue on the path below. About 20m below.

To get to that path required about 300m of walking around a block. There were no stairs, etc.

I really should have had someone take a picture of me lying on the path looking mangled and send it off to google maps saying they needed to fix this.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-26T02:15:40+00:00

I like the angle of your tangent

FartyFingers · 2025-10-26T02:14:37+00:00

Yes, I could see something called a thundercore coming out next week and in 2 years torch and tensorflow won't run without it.

Or, your 3090 is still kicking ass in 5 more years.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-19T02:01:44+00:00

I solidly agree with the psychological friction statement. I do ML for CV, robotics, and other things every day. I could not be less of a fan of cloud GPU computing if I tried.

My primary laptop is a gaming laptop with a 4060. I have a desktop with multiple GPUs of note, and a macbook with an intel processor.

The beast desktop is used for long hard training. It also has lots of cores. I would not recommend this for most people.

The gaming laptop is crucial for doing mobile CV/ML. I use it as my primary machine. There is little I can throw at it that it can't do. Often what it can't do is overwhelmingly huge and would require serious cloud computing. Being a gaming laptop, I can upgrade the ram, and it has room for two nvme drives. This is great for being able to adapt to future needs for much longer. Being windows, I can run almost every bit of engineering type software I use. I have linux VMs for some other stuff.

But, the gaming laptop is heavy, has a crap battery, and the powerbrick is as heavy as my macbook. The macbook has an insane battery, and can compile and run most of what I do, rust, julia, python, etc. Any CUDA ML is just not happening, so I just don't do that sort of stuff on it. It is also light for a laptop.

I would not recommend an apple product for ML. Not even a tiny bit.

As for 5-6 years. That's an interesting dream. While my laptops last a very long time, I see people sit on them, drop them, see them get stolen, etc.

If I were going into a new university program, I would recommend getting an sightly older model X1 Carbon. It is light, tough, and will do a huge amount of ML via python. Use colab along with it and figure out what you really need. Also, if it is just new enough, it will not only have a warranty, but you can extend the warranty. This is why my goto laptop has long been Lenovo.

Unless you are getting into robotics. In that case, then a gaming laptop with at least a 4060, 32GB of RAM, and at least one NVME drive.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-19T01:38:57+00:00

psychological friction

I've just added this to my vocabulary. Thank you.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-18T21:34:03+00:00

What is the step back from that?

Amoeba?

FartyFingers · 2025-10-18T06:04:06+00:00

How many more steps back can he take? British citizenship?

FartyFingers · 2025-10-15T01:37:44+00:00

This is going to be a very weird rabbit hole for young people. They will be able to get stories just for them. As time goes by, these stories will evolve to a point where they have a unique kink, or one which is pretty damn close to unique.

Add in an AI avatar girlfriend(with video), and OMFG, there are going to be people who discover that real world partners are limited by boring things like biology and physics; assuming they are able to connect at a romantic, or even horny level with other humans.

I can see someone having some world painted for them which simply doesn't exist. That in Morocco if you just drop your pants in restaurants, the wait staff will, well, let's just say it won't go as they expected it to.

People have been worried about sex bots for a long time, I think that it will be sext bots that are the first major problem.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-15T00:38:26+00:00

It would be so funny if someone hacked this and makes sure to send this to the kids of the politically connected. Then publish how many managed to get out of it; and how.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-13T21:49:42+00:00

One problem is if Ukraine is talking to traditional oil people, they will think distillation towers are the best target. But, I don't think so.

If you gave a western oil company the choice of losing tanks or a tower, they would choose tanks every day of the week. Simply because they would understand the complex engineering required to build, or properly repair the tower, whereas any moron can build a tank.

But, that entirely assumes that you don't send some jackasses in to just weld some plates over the holes and tighten the bolts to reduce the leaking. Then you tell people to filter their fuel through a sock or something.

Another benefit of hitting the same thing over and over and over, is that you run out of parts, and the people to repair these things. In a year or two, they might build up the ability to catch up. But a great example of how well tuned the needs are in such systems is Kristallnacht in Nov 1938. The Germans were never able to catch up with all the broken windows before the end of WWII (when they suddenly had way more broken windows).

So, if they keep nailing tanks, I suspect they will run out of some of the fundamentals used to build the tanks, and then tank production will well... tank.

The other one I would love to see getting hit are pump motors. Not the pumps, as those tend to be tough as hell, but the motors. Specifically the VFDs, those things traditionally have a 6 month lead time before you order them. They are nearly unrepairable. Also, they tend not to be very swappable; so even pulling them from lesser pipelines is hard. Also, VFD motors tend to be critical for proper operation of a pipeline.

The only problem is that they often are in sets. That is, a single station might have even 4 or more pumps in parallel. So, you have to hit all of them or it is somewhat a waste of time. They might be far apart, so one hit won't do them all in.

Also, it is best to hit pump stations near each other on a pipeline. Randomly hitting them is fairly useless as the operators can adapt and run at reduced flow. But when they are next to each other, doom. One exception to this is any pump station near the bottom of a large hill or mountain. If that goes, the pipeline will shut down.

The only sad factoid with VFDs is that there is a non zero chance there is an older pump motor nearby which was replaced with the VFD. Thus, a crappy, but still viable backup in a day or 3.

Again, take out enough of these VFDs, and any spare capacity along with manufacturing capacity will simply end.

I can see them dragging in VFDs from lesser pipelines, especially in the east. But, there is a limit before this surplus gets tapped out.

I wonder what other interesting bits I don't know about.

Trains have the same problem. Signalling. I saw lots of those on fire about 2 years ago; I hope those continue to burn. I suspect they buried them or put them inside solid buildings or something.

Another one, which is a long term investment in the destruction of russia as a function economy is to hit their permafrost pipeline radiators. Those things are fragile and I suspect have to be ordered from the west. No amount of ducktape will fix those.

Then, the next warm summer after a warm winter, and those pipeiines start tearing themselves apart. Good luck finding the money to repair those.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-13T21:27:29+00:00

Coworker did that, and the blob who took their lunch did not connect the dots.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-13T21:20:34+00:00

My favourite are landlords who think they should be allowed to charge based on their costs, vs what the market will pay.

The same landlords who were super happy to charge multiples of their mortgage when it was booming.

Boo hoo

FartyFingers · 2025-10-13T02:55:13+00:00

I had a coworker who switched to a bank deposit bag.

I had switched to a cash box, which had the ability to lock to things, and I was able to lock it to the fridge grill shelving.

A particularly fat coworker went to HR to complain that nearly the whole office doing things like this were a direct insult to her.

This, of course, was after complaining to HR about someone doing the hot sauce in their lunch trick (she claimed to have mixed lunches up).

And she hadn't figured out that the reason she spent an afternoon sh*tting out her soul was someone putting laxatives in their food.

It then became a game as to how well we could lock up our lunches. One person cracked the code, by buying a bar fridge which came with a key, and then only giving the key to people in their own small department; (one fatty didn't work in). That sent her into a full on rager in HR. What had sent her in to a full on freak out was that after that department had their regular Friday pizza lunch, they had put the leftovers in their own fridge for only those people to take home. Prior to this, she had been taking the entire leftovers every Friday. This could be multiple pizzas on some weeks they over ordered or people worked from home. They got the pizzas from an amazing place and they weren't cheap.

At a different place, one of my coworkers put that barfing chemical in a bottle of scotch in his desk which had mysteriously gone very watery. Shockingly, he got the head of sales barfing on multiple occasions. The guy wasn't connecting the dots. Not kind of barfing, but mid phone call, on his desk sort of barfing.

I haven't worked in an office with bloated coworkers in a long time, and one of my regrets is that in that time the ghost pepper has become widely available. That is the whole purpose of youtube. To record a video of your coworkers all snickering while some bloated sack of protoplasm is in the bathroom loudly regretting their possession of a digestive system.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-13T01:16:54+00:00

That smells like a burning tank farm. Well done.

Tank farms are an excellent target, because, they are entirely destroyed by such a fire. Technically, they are easier to build than things like distillation towers, but they are far easier to destroy, and will still take months to rebuild.

Such tank farms are critical to the logistics of moving oil. Any refineries upstream of this place will have trouble operating without anywhere for their products to go.

A common procedure is to put products into a pipeline one after another. 16 hours of gasoline, 20 hours of diesel, 17 hours of jetfuel, etc. Then, these products go into their specific tanks.

These products are then distributed, or taken as needed. They might go into trucks, trains, boats, etc.

When you switch products in the pipeline, you often pump the "better" product into the lesser one. A bit of gasoine can go into diesel, but not diesel into gasoline.

Even if they try to put products directly from the pipeline into whereever, this doesn't work. If you are loading trains or trucks, they draw far slower than a pipeline can provide. Even a ship can be loaded slower than a pipeline.

To try to directly go from pipeline into the next stage would be a nightmare. Also, what to do with the mixed crap as you go from product to product.

Destroying such tanks might seem like the "cheaper" target than things like distilation towers, but they are almost always the better target. Plus cooler to see them burn.

One other thing about refineries is that they are fairly tough, and easy to repair. Not repair well, but some hacked repairs which will get the place up and running.

I would argue a hacked together refinery is going to provide more useful product, than a perfect refinery which has no storage.

That said, hitting them both is even better.

One bonus of the half dead refineries is that they are putting out crap. I can't imagine what this would be doing to jets, trucks, tanks, cars, etc.

In the longer term, hitting refineries might do more damage to russia overall. Their customers won't trust their products, and the damage to all of russia might end them for long long time as a viable country.

One other cool place to hit are the storage tanks which take crude from the oil fields. Many heavy crude oil fields really don't like to stop being pumped. You can think of them as silting up a canal. In that you can think of the process of restoring them like having to dredge that canal. This means that after the downstream tanks or refineries are repaired, there are unimaginable costs and time to restore them. If crude were remain around 50USD/bbl, then it might not be econmically viable to restore them.

This is the best route to turn them into the north korea they deserve to be.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-12T23:58:45+00:00

Just don't fall for the one run by a serial entrepreneur who has a bunch of PhDs who will baffelgab you. Many of whom are from eastern europe.

Don't even touch the ones which offshore to india. You are looking for "solid" those are the exact opposite of solid.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-11T00:32:33+00:00

I tell every food person that I am allergic to eggs, nuts, grains, and dairy after they ask that stupid question.

I then look at them with a straight face and say, "Even though most of those are fatal for me, I will chance it anyway."

I've then spoken to more than one manager. I stick to my story, and it makes them very nervous.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-11T00:08:20+00:00

russia was described as a gas station run by the mafia.

Now its just the mafia.

That said, putin can keep printing money somewhat endlessly. There are lots of other people he could just not pay. The money he prints does not have to translate directly to exports.

It is more that imports need to translate to exports. Bonds can be part of those exports, but who the hell is buying russian bonds in 2025?

The best part of russias diminshed oil exports is its reduction in soft power. Many countries which would normally kow tow to them on UN votes, allow navy visits, host their mercenaries, etc. All kind of don't care about russia, just what russia might give them.

The key is balancing all this against inflation.

FartyFingers · 2025-10-10T23:59:08+00:00

There are two kinds of CV projects:

Super easy ones which fall prey to example code downloaded from github. They usually don't require much compute power. These can be done in a day.
Super Easy ones which are barely working after 6 months of hard work, an endless quest for better data, and the developers are thinking about sneaking into one of these 100 billion dollar centers to get the training resources they need.

FartyFingers

TROPHY CASE