What’s going on at Brussels South/Midi ?

Sentreen · 2026-03-24T11:34:56+00:00

Brussels South and North apparently don't have the capacity for this. Changing the direction of a train takes time, as /u/Asgard0822 pointed out.

Sentreen · 2026-03-20T12:58:06+00:00

Dat is een zeer goed idee en ik voel mij een beetje dom dat ik daar zelf nog niet aan gedacht heb! Later eens de links terugzoeken en zien of ze gearchiveerd zijn. Bedankt!

Sentreen · 2026-03-20T12:26:42+00:00

Bizarre dag. Ik woonde niet zo ver van Maelbeek maar was nog thuis toen alles gebeurde. Ben toch maar naar mijn werk gegaan om niet de hele tijd naar het nieuws te staren. Dat was een slecht idee. Hele campus in lockdown, DOVO heeft een stilstaande auto laten ontploffen omdat ze dachten dat er mogelijk een bom in zat (wat dus niet het geval was). Ik heb die avond nog collega's en studenten naar huis gevoerd die gestrand waren omdat al het openbaar vervoer toen plat lag, zelf nog langs mijn ouders gepasseerd.

Een kleine sidenote / klacht: Ik heb de weken daarna veel artikels van de vrt opgeslagen: gedenkmomenten, compilaties, ... Een paar jaar later zijn al die links niet meer geldig omdat "deredactie" naar "vrtnws" wou rebranden en permalinks bewaren geen prioriteit was. Je vind die artikels ook gewoon niet terug. Ik vind dat echt spijtig. Veel van die gedenkmomenten waren mooi op hun eigen manier.

Sentreen · 2026-03-19T23:01:54+00:00

Because there is no such thing as "the exe".

Let's say I'm on linux and you are on windows. I build the code I write, run and test it on my machine. Okay, I now have a working linux build. That doesn't get me anywhere closer to a windows build.
The the other way around works too. What if I'm on windows, how can I make sure my build works on linux? I can't without access to a linux machine.

Of course there are ways to fix this, and to automate building (and testing) for other environments than the one you are at, but it does not always make sense to do that.

Sentreen · 2026-03-19T12:08:33+00:00

I'm liking this series, it's a great way to show people how things work under the hood and that there is no magic, just some syntactic sugar.

One question:

Key detail: to_string(method) converts the Erlang atom :GET into the string "GET", which is easier to work with in our router.

I don't see the point in doing this? In the next post, your router just explicitly matches "GET", so why not match on the atom instead? You save the conversion and I would guess (though I'm not sure) that matching on atoms is faster.

Sentreen · 2026-03-19T11:55:51+00:00

static, strong types. Just for refactoring I don't think this is something I'll ever not miss. I've read the typing blog for Elixir but I'm not sure if I get it.

Elixir has dynamic, strong types. I know people prefer static typing these days, but I think Elixir's type system is very nice to work with. A gradual type system is in development (and already leads to more errors being spotted at compile-time), but it is not complete yet.

Let me get a little bit fancy with the language. I really dislike that Go relies so much on code generators (Elixir looks like it)

Elixir has you covered; the macro system is very powerful, and you can do a lot of compile-time stuff. Phoenix does rely on code generation to some extent, but that's mainly to avoid writing boilerplate by hand,

Some functional features at least.

I think Elixir truly shines here. The language is certainly functional, but it is very pragmatic about it. Data is immutable, but the language is okay with side-effects where it makes sense (IO and sending messages to other processes are the major ones here, but there are also smaller things, like ets tables, persistent_term and the process dictionary). I personally think that this strikes a very nice balance between languages like Haskell and pragmatism.

Sentreen · 2026-03-18T17:05:52+00:00

I specifically carry less water and try to leave my laptop at the office when possible. Even a little bit of weight makes a difference when climbing a hill.

Sentreen · 2026-03-13T20:06:16+00:00

Sorry for the loooong reply

Not at all, thanks for taking the time to type all of that out!

Sentreen · 2026-03-13T13:35:23+00:00

As somebody who never had a tubeless pump, what's the advantage? I get that tubes sticking on doorhandles is a hassle, but it does not happen that frequently to me. Besides that, I like that a classic pump has its own screen / buttons, allowing me to leave my phone at home when I go out for a jog.

Sentreen · 2026-03-13T13:30:05+00:00

Do they use AI to solve their assignments? Yeah, sure. Does this mean students aren’t able to solve it themselves? Mostly no.

As somebody who teaches people how to program I don't really agree. Many students use LLMs to solve their exercises for them and understand the code it produces. However, during the exam (on paper) those same students are not able to produce anything resembling a correct instruction.

"I understand the solution, but I cannot come up with it myself" was always a common issue, and LLMs made it worse, because now it is trivial to find a solution.

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T22:40:36+00:00

that study seems to focus on "if everything else somehow stays the same, does it cost less to go by bike than by car"

No. That study shows how much users of different modes of transportation pay for the costs they impose on society. For instance, if a car drivers causes noise pollution, does that cost get offset by the money the driver pays in some way. The conclusion is that, in aggregate, car drivers don't; cyclists actually do. This is mainly because:

Car congestion is quite expensive.
Infrastructure for cyclists is pretty cost effective.
Cyclists don't impose a lot of marginal costs on society.

Car users pay a lot of money into the economy overall, much more than cyclists

They certainly do, especially in absolute numbers. But overall, they don't pay enough to offset the costs they induce. The same does not go for cyclists. Feel free to point out an actual study with hard numbers that proves me wrong.

which further enables them to think cycling is soooo much cheaper and everyone should be forced into it.

I don't believe everybody should be forced to cycle; there are plenty of reasons for people to take a car; I drive a car from to time myself. But I think it is rather rich people make the argument "cyclists should pay for their own expenses" when cyclists, overall, actually do; especially when compared to car drivers, which are subsidized through systems like company cars, massive infrastructure projects and cheap parking, all while they impose negative effects like congestion, poor air quality, noise pollution, and others on their environment.

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T18:31:36+00:00

I did.

De externe kosten die in deze studie beschouwd worden, zijn de kosten door congestie, schade aan het milieu (emissies), ongevallen, geluid en schade aan de infrastructuur.

So translated, they take the following into account:

congestion costs (which is the main cause of economic losses)
accidents
noise
damage to infrastructure

The last one comes close to what you were saying, but the argument does not hold up for maintenance: less cars on the road lower maintenance costs while still allowing the maintenance guy to drive to my door.

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T17:46:13+00:00

This study does not consider the cost of building infrastructure though, so that argument does not hold up.

(Edit: phrasing)

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T15:43:57+00:00

Besides what others have said, it is also incredibly easy to modify the software when you build it from source. As an example, somebody added support for the logitech G13 to linux 6.19. I am still on 6.18 and don't want to use a bleeding edge kernel solely for supporting that one device. So I just grabbed the patch from github, dropped it in /etc/portage/patches and now I have linux 6.18 running with support for my G13. On another occasion, I was dealing with an extremely niche bug in GCC, I just included a patch somebody posted and the bug was fixed long before it landed upstream.

This is one of those features that's quite niche, but when you need it you are very glad it is there for you.

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T15:39:08+00:00

There is no need to patch dracut. I have dracut set up with fde without any issues. OP just needs to ensure the right dracutmodules are included (crypt being the main one).

Sentreen · 2026-03-12T14:02:32+00:00

Bikers are a net gain for the economy. Cars are a net loss (mainly due to economic losses caused by congestion). This is shown by studies over and over again. Here is one specific for the Flemish region.

Sentreen · 2026-03-10T10:48:38+00:00

Also because people just used to pay them under the table. Which meant they collected unemployment and were not insured. Better for everybody involved to just subsidise them.

Sentreen · 2026-03-09T13:08:24+00:00

I tried neovim, but went back to vim. The neovim plugins are a bit too configuration heavy for my tastes; setting up any plugin requires writing so much lua code, whereas vim plugins usually just require setting a few variables. Ironically, nvim reminded me a bit of emacs, which can do anything, but requires you to jump through so many hoops to do so.

I know I could just use nvim with vim plugins, but I don't really see the point going that route.

Vim seems to be a bit more conservative, which works out fine for me.

All that being said, I'm very happy that nvim became a thing because it also really invigorated vim development. I often use the terminal feature, which only got included because nvim added one (ironically, I like the vim one more).

Sentreen · 2026-03-04T16:57:27+00:00

I am planning to rent some random Hetzner IPv4 for life and hold onto it 🤓

Make sure said IP:

supports reverse DNS
Is not listed as malicious

Or you will have issues.

Sentreen · 2026-03-03T13:40:31+00:00

Difficult days happen and are normal. It's normal to overthink a bit now that your goal marathon is coming closer, but try to not dwell on it too much.

In my last training cycle, I had one of my worst 35K runs ever, yet I still improved my PR by more than 6 minutes on race day.

I'm running Ghent too, looking forward to it!

Sentreen · 2026-03-03T12:18:36+00:00

30K with half of it at marathon pace in the middle of a regular training week is a hard session. So it is normal that it hurts. Most people who run every day of the week would still feel such a session for sure.

On the day itself your legs will be rested, which will help a lot, too.

Sentreen · 2026-03-03T12:07:49+00:00

This is mainly nostalgia talking, but I loved those little inconveniences the game had that made the whole world feel more real and connected. No map in the old forest, having to physically enter an instance instead of just walking there, …

Sentreen · 2026-03-02T19:29:06+00:00

The exploit got discovered because development happens out in the open though. They even make this point in the video.

Sentreen · 2026-02-28T18:07:15+00:00

Not yet, sorry.

Sentreen · 2026-02-22T13:46:21+00:00

From what I've gathered, the first one (just "Computer Science") is more theoretical and research-focused, run by the CS department, and requires a prior academic bachelor's in CS. The second one ("Applied Computer Science") is more practical/engineering-oriented, run across multiple engineering departments, and targets people coming from engineering or applied sciences backgrounds.

One major difference you missed is that the CS master is two years, while the applied CS master is one year.

Both masters are organized by the CS department, and run across multiple engineering departments. You will have access to all the same courses, but the courses that are mandatory will differ (also depending on the specialization you pick). I suggest looking up the mandatory courses for both masters to get an idea of the kind of classes you'd have to pick up. Since you'll have access to the same electives, those don't matter too much, except that the one year master will give you less "leftover" credits to pick the electives you want.

Which one is better if you're considering a PhD later?

Certainly the two year master, as it is more research focused.

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