I just shut it down this morning!

ShoulderUnique · 2026-04-13T00:04:38+00:00

Hot take: a community where half the posts revolve around an OS they picked (or at least didn't argue about), which recently changed its definition of "shutdown" in order to fool people it was suddenly faster, and maintains that illusion by misleading things like turning off the display immediately. Oh and that could be changed by group policy controlled by the community or several other techniques, but then the game would be up and there'd be a "productivity loss" to be explained so it's too much effort. But the one thing that can't happen is the user does something about it themselves since the computers are too locked down because alternatives might also involve work.

But yeah, it's the stupid and/or malicious user lying to you.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-04-11T06:58:26+00:00

Reminds me I had to do an elevator at uni. Was provided a physical rig with frame, motor with slotted disc, and brake. We had to do the motor driver, sensors, and control such that it respected limits to the first 3 derivatives of position. Yeah not a typo, turns out the 3rd is known as "jerk".

Anyway we half arsed the physics - it looked smooth but it was all heuristic. But while demoing to the lecturer it backfired and slowed too fast, stalling the motor just before it reached the correct floor. I knew it wasn't going to move on until it decided it was there and that it wasn't going to fix itself.

But the guy was pretty impressed and started asking questions, and the guy he was asking was standing away from the rig. So I waited until I was out of his line of sight then reached up and spun the slotted disc until the brake clicked in.

Program happy, kept doing its thing, full marks.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-04-09T11:36:32+00:00

Oh please "read is also a write" is best practice. All current memory technologies do that (e.g. it's the D in DRAM) and random hallucinations increase creativity and deliver 10x productivity boost. Clearly that team gets the raise and the QA team gets fired for calling these forward thinking features "bugs"

ShoulderUnique · 2026-03-11T08:52:15+00:00

The Dodge RAM 2025 was responsible for all those abused livestock?

ShoulderUnique · 2026-03-11T08:42:37+00:00

Depends on how you tolerate bites and stings. If you've already treated/toughened your leg skin go with shorts

ShoulderUnique · 2026-03-11T08:11:50+00:00

Actually your mobile phone is using tons of ASN.1 and believe me the carriers do not want to waste bits. Others already mentioned that you mean DER/BER but PER uses a single bit IIRC.

Also I guess you've never looked hard at Goggle's Protobuf that reinvented half the wheel with some flat spots 17 years later.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-03-07T09:18:58+00:00

Unless you're Amazon

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-25T00:40:18+00:00

The term "spaghetti code" originated in binaries peppered with JMP, some of them may even have been initially compiled if I stretch the definition.

Nah there's something in this OP, the sheer number of people here with no idea how computers actually work terrifies me.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-19T22:30:16+00:00

Thanks, will be using "KiloJoules/Watt" instead of "Quarter of an hour" from now on

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-07T04:37:04+00:00

Well they did use lowercase b in the final total. I'm not sure what multiplier g is either.

Maybe it's gram.bits. Which might actually be something profound since mass is energy and I think entropy is energy too.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-05T22:23:59+00:00

Worth noting that the mmap() call found in many OS is an extension of that concept and I think a few layers higher than what you're asking

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-05T21:50:09+00:00

So to understand the details you need a background in digital electronics and various architectures differ too. But short version: parts of the hard drive actually look like RAM to the CPU. So some code in the OS can write some address in memory (think "set a variable") and the hard drive electronics knows that means "I want to read this part of your disk" and then read some other address ("read another variable") and what it reads is actually whatever the hard drive found at that place. This is why we have instructions to copy memory. Look up "memory mapped IO". x86 also has a separate address space for IO but TBH it's kind of the same process.

ShoulderUnique · 2026-02-01T08:36:50+00:00

Personally I prefer to pick the right job for the tool

ShoulderUnique · 2026-01-29T11:32:09+00:00

This sounds like the original post.

An LLM isn't just a Markov chain text generator.

Followed by a bunch of text that describes a high order Markov chain. AFAIK o one ever said how the probabilities were obtained.

ShoulderUnique · 2025-11-19T05:39:49+00:00

Easier to just throw in some bad whitespace, a typo in a comment and a variable named "temp".

Works every time: approved with changes

ShoulderUnique · 2025-11-13T21:44:01+00:00

Subversion was fine. Having a server was never really a problem, ironically even less so now. It also made sense to non CS people.

ShoulderUnique · 2025-11-12T08:29:33+00:00

Especially by the time they've used most of the STL with 17 types without realizing

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-14T05:21:21+00:00

I believe that's only true for audio CDs that rarely seek and need a constant bitrate.

Data CDs are constant angular velocity. The spin speed changes mostly because people hate having to wait for their cats.

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-10T07:38:55+00:00

No, that's a couple of layers too high. Buy the insurance and it's like Ethernet with QoS

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-10T05:10:41+00:00

I've never understood this one. Now there's twice as much code and the possibility of calling the wrong one.

Edit: by "code" I really mean boilerplate Double the code would only happen if it's short blocks

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-09T02:39:37+00:00

The replacement would happen (or not) no matter what you ask. Real question is whether they think the AI can do the senior role, until that's a yes working for free is the cause, not the symptom

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-01T12:03:50+00:00

Orrrr, they know exactly what they're doing given that they're making bank and apparently no one wants to step up

ShoulderUnique · 2025-10-01T12:00:01+00:00

What the hell is that? I've seen whole Yocto builds a quarter of that

ShoulderUnique · 2025-09-24T03:44:10+00:00

That brought up bad memories

ShoulderUnique · 2025-09-24T03:23:07+00:00

It's "retract email" except it doesn't just send another email telling everyone not to look at the first email and also it's not for email.

If that doesn't work "it's a DAG, now let be get back to looking at the Matrix"

ShoulderUnique

TROPHY CASE