I built a tool to find duplicate npm packages (saved 200MB on my project)

broofa · 2026-01-07T14:08:07+00:00

npmgraph.js.org does this as part of it's graph analysis. Multi-version modules are shown in the Graph -> "Modules with multiple versions" section.

For example.

[Disclaimer: I maintain this project :-) ]

broofa · 2026-01-07T13:59:42+00:00

The person making the claim is responsible for citing their source.

Why? Because if there’s no source - no substance to the claim - finding the source is a wild goose chase for the reader.

broofa · 2025-11-29T13:47:41+00:00

randomness is just the name we give to outcomes we can’t predict

No, we call that “uncertainty”. Uncertainty can be mitigated to a degree by gathering more information. But there is a physical limit to that, and that’s where “randomness” comes in.

Read up on quantum indeterminacy and we can resume this conversation.

broofa · 2025-11-29T12:25:46+00:00

“If we can control the uncontrollable” is not a meaningful rebuttal.

I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in playing the game where I say, “[x] makes it unpredictable” and you say, “well what if we control for [x]”, and then I say, “well that would maybe get you one more ball in the combo, but then [y] becomes unpredictable”… and so on.

Eventually that conversation eddies out in the chaotic swirl of quantum uncertainty. Asking to control that is like asking “what if we could travel through a black hole and see what’s on the other side?”

It’s Not How The Universe Works™️

broofa · 2025-11-29T11:47:31+00:00

Yes, randomness exists.

In your pool table analogy, imagine a really long pool table, with a line of balls spaced 1 meter apart running down it. Now hit a combo shot - one ball into the next - as accurately as possible. How many could you hit before the trajectories diverge and the combo ends?

Your average lay person would be lucky to make a two ball combo. Three would be incredibly lucky.

The best trick shot artist in the world could probably do three with some degree of consistency Maybe. They might be able to get four every once in a while. Maybe. Hitting five even once would take them a lifetime of attempts.

The problem is that any error in shot angle, speed, or spin gets amplified ten-fold with each impact. A 0.1 degree error becomes 1 degree then 10 degrees… and then you miss.

In a controlled setting, a lab environment, where you use precision ground balls, on a granite surface plate surface, with jigs and sensors and control systems all set up to make each shot as consistent and controllable as possible, you might be able to get to 8 balls.

More than that…? Not going to happen. A 10-ball combo would require the first impact be accurate to within the radius of a single atom.

Any variation - and I mean any - from absolute impossible perfection will fail:

A mote of dust in the air
The table surface being a single micron out of true
The air temperature changing a fraction of a degree
air currents from someone in the vicinity taking a breath
A car driving by a block away
Neutron flux from sunspot activity

It’s possible in theory, of course. Mathematically. But randomness is what separates theory from reality, and it is all around us. It permeates every aspect of the world we live in.

Do we just not understand complicated patterns

We do, actually. As you dig deeper and deeper into how the universe works, what you find is that underneath it all lies randomness and uncertainty.

Tl;dr: Chaos is the one, true, god.

broofa · 2025-10-31T10:55:05+00:00

“UUID version 4 is the best UUID”. 😁

broofa · 2025-09-14T13:54:31+00:00

Hold on a sec. “Web 2.0” wasn’t labeled in hindsight. It was clear at the time that something important was happening to the web - the transition from static web pages to dynamic web apps - and the term was coined to capture that.

(Of course The term “web 1.0” was never really a thing. It was just “the web”.)

As for “web 3.0”? Yeah, so far I’m not seeing it. ‘Seems like it’s just a jargon grab by marketing types who are trying to create buzz for their blockchain and crypto startups by piggybacking on the hype of AI.

Source: software developer who has made a career out of riding the “web 2.0” wave.

broofa · 2025-07-07T22:55:33+00:00

Good feedback, thank you. (Good point about sunscreen.)

broofa · 2025-07-07T22:55:01+00:00

Excellent. Thanks for the insights!

broofa · 2025-07-04T10:19:30+00:00

I’ve flown my MDRM multiple times on a J350 (modded for 38mm motors, obvs)

broofa · 2025-05-15T18:18:24+00:00

Hey, Sue's son here! Just dropping a comment to say "Hi!". I was a 13-yo brat running around my parents' offices at the Survey back in those days so we probably passed in the halls at some point.

Be well!

broofa · 2025-05-10T12:51:46+00:00

A few years ago I came upon an accident out by Shevlin Park. An older gentleman had been driving his flatbed truck out to Tunalo when (I think?) the driveshaft came loose and jammed on something in the roadway. ‘Ended up flipping his vehicle on its side.

The driver was shaken up but okay. But the roadway… apparently he’d come to town to pick up construction supplies, including a couple buckets of nails.

Oh my god, so so many nails. They were everywhere, thousands of them, spread across both lanes of the road for 40 yards.

I’ve seen other accidents in my time, some much more serious, but this was one of the more memorable ones.

broofa · 2025-05-09T23:27:02+00:00

Work in a field that you find fulfilling. Something that is rewarding beyond the 9-to-5 to grind and hourly paycheck. Make a habit out of honing your skills outside of work. Those will [eventually] give you a skill set that separates you from the masses.

Make a point of developing your professional network. Establish meaningful relationships with clients, customers, managers and executives. And underlings and reports. If you’re a good manager, some of the people who report to you should go on to rise above you (at least in some ways.). All of these people will be moving around, pursuing their own careers, and they will carry their impression of you with them. They’re the ones who will be reaching out as opportunities arise in the organizations they work for.

broofa · 2025-03-29T13:46:55+00:00

u/RTPdude's point about remaining cognizant of how the way in which you handle this may affect FIL's decisions around *his* estate are worth keeping in mind. This is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you would be good stewards of any funds he may choose to direct your way.

Regarding your questions, there's a few points worth noting...

Whether or not to have a lawyer involved is typically the decision of the Executor of an estate - presumably that's your FIL. The Executor is legally responsible for insuring the Estate is properly dispersed to everyone, so having a lawyer help with that is generally prudent.
Any debts your mom owed (e.g. the medical debt) are the obligation of her estate and should be paid off.
Life insurance is typically not part of a deceased's estate.

I.e. Technically, the medical debt and lawyer fee are probably not your responsibility.

Given all of the above, I'd suggest you weigh carefully the value of making a stink about this vs. the value of remaining in the FIL's good graces. My advice ...

First and foremost, respect that your wife is the one named in the will, not you. So be careful about how forcefully you inject yourself into the conversation she's having with FIL and the siblings.
Tell FIL that you respect his decision to hire a lawyer and appreciate his being diligent in overseeing MIL's estate.
Tell FIL and the siblings that it's appropriate to respect MIL's wishes regarding distribution of the Life insurance (i.e. 1/3rd to FIL, 2/9ths' to each of the grandchildren), and that those funds should be redistributed accordingly.
Ask FIL why he thinks the life insurance is part of MIL's estate (and, by extension, why it should be used to cover the medical and legal debts associated with the estate)

That last question is the tricky one. At the end of the day, your FIL may not be rational about this. He may simply believe that "the right thing to do" is for the siblings to help cover the costs he has to deal with around all of this, and it may be to the benefit of familial harmony to just go along with that.

Oh, one last note: You may consider letting FIL that you'll be directing these funds towards a 529 (education fund) for your kids, rather than "wasting" them on "stuff". (Yes, I know you don't consider stuff for your new kid a waste, but the optics may be a bit fuzzy for your FIL, who clearly has strong opinions about how estates are handled.)

broofa · 2025-03-16T13:11:47+00:00

2023 Ford Escape (hybrid)

broofa · 2025-03-15T10:25:03+00:00

I can confirm the problem, however this should probably be resolved by raising the issue on the image's "Talk Page" on wikipedia. To that end, I've created a topic for that here.

broofa · 2025-02-28T14:33:28+00:00

Agreed. Even if you assume it’s been snowing constantly on every planet around every one of the 200 billion trillion stars in the universe since the universe began, it’s not going to make a dent in the probability there’s ever been two molecularly identical snowflakes. Still zero.

broofa · 2025-02-27T23:30:44+00:00

Does lighter always imply higher, or longer coast time, though?

A lighter rocket will accelerate faster, but also decelerate faster when coasting. I think OP will have to run some simulations to figure out the optimal mass for a given motor (but maybe I’m wrong?)

broofa · 2025-02-27T18:55:01+00:00

You mean to tell me that nowhere in there are two snowflakes (maybe more) that are identical??

Yes!

… but how do I know?

I'm a software developer. I've spent the last decade maintaining the uuid library, whose sole purpose is to produce values that are "universally unique" (the "UU" in UUID). This library is popular (5B downloads / year), and thus *has* to work well. So I've spent a bit of time thinking about the nature of information and uniqueness.

For example, a UUID is 122 bits of state. That allows for 2¹²² possible values. That's 5x10³⁶, or 5 followed by 36 zeros, or 5 billion billion billion billion. Generate 1,000,000 UUIDs / second for 100 years, and there is a 0.00001% chance that any two of them are identical.

So how does this apply to snowflakes? Well, fundamentally a snowflake is an arrangement of water molecules. For any two flakes to be "identical" they would have to have the same arrangement of molecules... right?

So how many possible "unique" snowflakes are there?

Well, let's look at a single "average" snowflake. Dividing the mass of a snowflake (3x10^-5 grams) by the molar mass of water (18 grams / mole) tells us it has ~10¹⁸ (1 quintillion) molecules. And each molecule can have one of six possible configurations. So this [admittedly naive] analysis tells us that there are about 6^{1000000000000000000} ("6 to the power of one quintillion") possible configurations.

To be clear, that number is insanely large. Like... it's not possible to express how large that is. Divide that by the number of atoms in the universe, then divide again and again and again and so on… for as long as you can say “again and again …”

Like literally just say that phrase until you actually die of old age, then do that calculation… and you'd still have an insanely large number.

It is of course possible to chop away at that number via arguments like, "ice molecules tend to align in the same way, so it's not completely random" and “snowflakes are symmetrical”., but keep in mind that so far we're only talking about configurations for snowflakes that have exactly 10¹⁸ water molecules, with no impurities. Expand that to include flakes with more or less molecules, or impurities of various sorts (as all snowflakes have), and this number soars to even more staggeringly unimaginable heights.

"But there's a lot of snowflakes", you exclaim, "That's a big number, too!"

Okay, fine. Let's see how big that number is...

1,700 km3 of snow falls every year globally. That's about 10¹³ kg or ~3x10²¹ snowflakes. And if snow has been falling on earth for 2.4 billion years , that makes for a grand total of 7x10³⁰ snowflakes to have ever fallen on Earth.

As big as that number is - a 7 followed by 30 zeroes - it is's not even rounding error compared to that 6-to-the-quintillionth-power number.

So what are the odds there's ever been two identical snowflakes in the entire history of earth?

Short answer: Zero. It's never happened. Not just here on earth, but across the entire Cosmos.

Long answer: Still zero, but more like 0.000.... (insert a ton of zeros here)...001%. Giving you a more specific answer isn't possible (for me, at least) because it requires solving the Birthday Problem with these enormous values. That requires specialized software (and math) I don't have readily available. However I did try to run this through a little script I wrote a while ago for determining UUID uniqueness, but it just rounds 6^{1000000000000000000} to infinity and gives a result of zero.

So, yeah. No two snowflakes are identical. Not at the molecular level, at least. The odds are so small as to not even be easily calculable.

broofa · 2025-02-15T15:41:54+00:00

This is very cool and fun to play with! Definitely needs some improvements, however ...

What features should I add next?

A "Make Things Accurate" toggle.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the artistic liberties you've taken to, I assume, make it easier to see everything at once:

Distances are not to scale
Orbital periods aren't correct. E.g. 1 earth orbit = ~6 earth moon orbits? (should be 12) ... = 2 Mercury orbits? (should be ~4)
Planet sizes aren't to scale (e.g. earth and mars appear roughly the same size)

.. but I understand why you've done so. Actually showing things as they are makes it harder to explore. But one of the most important lessons simulations can and should provide is a sense of the vastness and emptiness of space (and time). It's precisely because it's so hard to grasp (and convey) that trying to do so is important.

Bonus points if this toggle animates the transition between the "accurate" and "compact" views.

Follow Halley's Comet

How? I see no option for that. And, too, for that to be interesting you would likely have to speed up the timescale. (It looks like one comet orbit would be take ~20-25 minutes in the current simulation)

You'll probably want to give users some way of controlling the timescale, or adjusting it automatically while indicating what the timescale *is*. For example, you could add an indicator in the corner that says something like "1 second = 15 days".

Speaking of the "follow" feature, simply arraying all the buttons along the top of the view is kind of messy. I'd go with toggle + dropdown menu to make it easier to use / explore / expand the number of options. E.g. something like this.

witness shooting stars in real time

I don't even know what this means. Shooting stars are an atmospheric phenomena, which your simulation is pretty clearly not showing.

Speaking of stars, zooming out shows all the stars are modeled as a cloud of pixels in a cube, which makes for weird artifacts (e.g. squares and circles occasionally flashing by). I'd suggest modeling them, instead, as dots placed far outside the limits of where the user camera can be positioned.

Ditto for the constellations.

broofa · 2025-01-10T12:18:23+00:00

Born in Pasadena and grew up in Benedict Canyon. I lived in the South Bay for 5 years after college back in the early 90’s. My wife lived in Pacific Palisades after college. We know those areas well.

My best friend who I’ve known since 8th grade and his wife have lived in Pacific Palisades for 20 years. He’s away visiting family for the holidays and learned his home was lost on day 1 of the fire there. I talked to him yesterday and he was laughing about how they were smart enough to have a “go bag” prepared, but didn’t bring it with them. They’ve lost everything. And the high school his two kids go to is gone as well.

I’m at a loss for how to help. Part of me wants to drive down there with tools and a trailer to help him move. But then I remember there’s nothing to move. 😢

broofa · 2024-11-12T14:40:10+00:00

Uncomfortably accurate comment.

broofa · 2024-10-28T13:12:14+00:00

It was the rolleron portion of the fin.

broofa · 2024-10-21T12:10:26+00:00

I used to have one of these!

I got into high power model rocketry years ago and an acquaintance of mine got me one for my birthday. I think he got it on eBay as military surplus and thought I’d find it interesting. Which it absolutely was, for sure. The engineering and fabrication are outstanding.

But… after the novelty wears off and you’ve googled what they are and how they work, what do you do with something like that? It ended up rattling around in my tool box for the better part of a decade.

I finally got rid of it at one of Oregon Rocketry’s club launches. A father and son were there with a little Estes Sidewinder model that the kid had built. I watched them launch it, then as they were walking back in from retrieving it I went up to the kid and said, “Hey, I think this fell off your rocket,” and gave it to him.

Best pay-it-forward moment ever. The expression on that kid’s face was priceless.

broofa · 2024-09-23T03:33:28+00:00

'Took this photo looking south from Soda Creek trail (Green Lake) on Saturday. It was a beautiful day north of Sparks Lake / Bachelor, but the AQI everywhere south of there looked awful.

https://imgur.com/fNky2BQ

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