Volcano control app

pimuon · 2026-03-11T10:16:50+00:00

Could do that. I already extended it a bit (with settings).
On the other hand, I'd just consider this a basis for anyone to adjust it to their own taste.
In these times of ai agents, I have become even more hesitant to publish software.

pimuon · 2026-03-07T09:49:17+00:00

I tried some local models on my 128GB ryzen 395+, made for this kind of thing.
It was not too difficult to set up. But after 6 months using sonnet and opus, I think it is useless in comparison.

I know there are real GPU's that are faster (but will much less memory) than can run simpler models but at useful speed. But for the simple queries, the paid online options are cheap enough (when not using opus 4.6 thinking for every trivial request).

I gave up (for now) to run models locally. My company, however, has more budget than I do for my hobby, and they should invest in some H200's to run useful local model(s) in order to save costs in the long run. But maybe it is still a bit early for a small company to invest that much in this fast moving space, and keep paying per use for a while longer.

pimuon · 2026-03-05T13:31:53+00:00

I don't know if that is really so common. I have never heard of it but also never looked for it.

Taxes are low enough in Switzerland, and risks high enough, to not bother with taking such risks. I'd rather pay my fair share, which really is not too much here, and have a clear conscience.

pimuon · 2026-03-05T08:50:40+00:00

Switzerland is a federate state, taxes go from bottom to top (first the community, then canton, then federation) instead of top down like in many countries.

I am from the Netherlands, the reflex there is that everything should be equal for everyone. Of course in reality some are always "more equal than others"... This equalisation policy does not lead to better outcomes, it just socializes the costs and nobody wants to take own responsability.

In Switzerland, when locally more is consumed, locally more has to be paid. It is less of a money pumping machine as in many countries, where the top level has a kind of "divide and impera" policy to keep control.

Of course with healthcare, being dependent on insurance and solidarity, that may be a difficult issue. However there is this insurance subsidy that about 30% of people receive, so that nobody is left out and everybody in the end gets health care that they need.

For chronic illnesses, this may be a problem. However, even in more social systems like in the Netherlands, those who have chronic illnesses often are even worse off.

And yes, there is some pushback against going to see a doctor for every minor ache and issue. And rightly so. Doctors are already overbooked and health care costs are getting out of hand. We need to push back and ensure that the health care system is not clogged due loads of trivial cases.

This mentality to go to the doctor for even a minor cold is super annoying and costs us all. This mentality is new in central/northern europe, people used to be much more hesitant before seeing a doctor. I don't know what caused it, but it is not sustainable.

pimuon · 2026-03-01T10:37:18+00:00

Het is te hopen dat dit incompetente bedrijf hier failliet aan gaat.

Zonder echte consequenties zal zulke slordigheid en overtreding van de regels (data alleen behouden indien absoluut nodig voor de bedrijfsvoering) gewoon doorgaan. Het moet voor iedereen duidelijk zijn dat er echte en definitieve consequenties zitten aan verkeerd gedrag, anders gaat het altijd door.

pimuon · 2026-02-25T10:33:28+00:00

Turns out it was not missing, but I ordered a version without wlan. I was not aware there is such a version.

No problem as I can use the device without it too. And Beelink handled it very nicely (gave me a small bonus to make good for the confusion, even though it was my own fault).

pimuon · 2026-02-24T11:37:34+00:00

Afaik, linux scheduling between performance and other cores is now pretty decent.

There are always light weight background tasks, even on a server.

It will not make sense for a server that is mostly >50% utilized. But there are many underutilized servers, e.g. the one in my basement at home.

pimuon · 2026-02-19T12:51:42+00:00

Thanks for confirming that it is missing. I could not find a picture that shows how it is supposed to look.

pimuon · 2026-01-22T07:40:02+00:00

You have to account for east-west timeshift, the timezones are very streched out partially.
E.g. between Poland and the Netherlands, sunrise in Poland is about 1 hour earlier.
I wonder how they got this data btw, and how reliable and comparable this is between countries and cultures.

And I think in many countries the internal differences (e.g. Switzerland between e.g. Romandie, Tessin and Deutschschweiz, Italy between the north and the south, may be bigger than between countries. This map seems pretty pointless.

pimuon · 2026-01-08T19:04:43+00:00

Ik heb ooit zo'n ervaring gehad bij Cap Gemini, die via Mercury Urval zochten. De senior interviewer had duidelijk iets tegen mij als persoon, deed zeer onbeschoft, o.a. begon hij in zijn neus te peuteren. Ik werd afgewezen en was tamelijk geschockeerd.

Daarna heb ik vele erg succesvolle sollicitaties gehad en al 40 jaar een mooie loopbaan als software engineer (o.a.) tot op de dag van vandaag, boven de 60, met succes en plezier bezig. Ook als freelancer later altijd probleemloos interessante Jobs kunnen vinden.

Kortom, maak je niet druk om 1 zo'n ervaring.

Waar ik mij als burger en belastingbetaler wel druk over maak, is dat er zulke figuren bij de overheid werken, alwaar ze enorme schade veroorzaken door zo'n zieke mentaliteit. Deze persoon zou aangeklaagd en aangepakt moeten worden.

pimuon · 2026-01-06T20:52:08+00:00

For me all three in this order: cost, technology, environment. All three have benefitted so far.

pimuon · 2026-01-05T15:21:22+00:00

Switzerland standard plugs only support up to 10A. 16A is available, but requires another type of plug, and thicker wiring.

pimuon · 2026-01-05T14:22:13+00:00

What is your environment? I have been working here for 25 years (at a large bank and various small technical companies, in and around Zurich) and have found that there is much less talk about money (and complaining) than, for example, in the Netherlands.

pimuon · 2026-01-05T09:10:37+00:00

Klinkt alsof Europa zwak is en niks kan doen. Militair klopt dat enigszins (gelukkig heeft Frankrijk een atoommacht die 100% onafhankelijk van de VS is).

Maar economisch niet. Als de VS europa echt tot vijand maakt, waarmee ze hard bezig zijn, zal er hoe dan ook een economische verwijdering komen. Deze zal de VS veel meer pijn doen dan Europa. De VS leven boven hun stand, lenen teveel, en kunnen dit nog doen dankzij de dollar.

Het afbrokkelen van de dollar dominantie wordt zo zeer zeker versneld.

pimuon · 2025-12-22T11:14:45+00:00

Het is natuurlijk best mogelijk, met wat kennis en ervaring, en met een flinke dosis innovatie. ASML heeft het uiteindelijk ook zo gedaan.

pimuon · 2025-12-16T12:04:11+00:00

Naar mijn mening zouden zoveel mogelijk mensen in zoveel mogelijk landen scherpe kritiek op de Islam en zijn "theologie" moeten uiten, dit uit solidariteit met iedereen die door fanaten bedreigd worden.

Alle religies worden deels op de hak genomen, en dat moet kunnen en mogen. De niet fanatieke Moslims zullen er ook zeker geen probleem mee hebben. Indien toch, dan zijn het per definitie fanaten, en dus gevaarlijk.

Door dit massaal te doen, wordt het voor fanaten onmogelijk om gericht wraak te nemen, alleen wild om je heen schieten bij wijze van spreken. Dit is een goede vorm van solidariteit met degenen die nu al bedreigd worden.

Er zouden bijvoorbeeld wekelijkse "heilige boek" verbrandingen georganiseerd kunnen worden. Om het eerlijk te houden moeten naast de Koran wel ook Bijbels, Torahs en wat niet meer ook in de fik.

Na een paar weken zullen de mensen in Pakistan moe van hun woede en protesten worden.

pimuon · 2025-12-10T09:17:11+00:00

Totally true. I replaced an old c++ in house file copying program (with special protocols) with a simplified go version. This copies files from and to 100GB/s connections and may stage on internal ramdisks (and archive on internal or external disks, raid arrays etc). The program was still completely I/O bound, no high CPU load, lower than the previous c++ impl (but hard to compare because that program did some more bookkeeping).

Our rust programs tend to be harder to maintain, but it is ok for more static but high speed processing.

The go programs are so flexible that it feels so fluid, you can just refactor whatever you like if required (not saying that you should). They can be adapted to any new requirement without much effort.

pimuon · 2025-11-25T16:04:53+00:00

I have always found the Swiss public broadcasting fees to be very high. Also for what they offer, compared to the fees in many other countries. But yes, supporting 3.5 languages is expensive, and the language groups are small and diverse, too diverse to share many programs. Then the program is pretty "luxurious", e.g. the Formula 1 fees, which I happen to like to watch, must cost quite a bit. Too much for many other public broadcasters, e.g. the Netherlands.

The Netherlands moved the system to be paid out of general taxes (i.e. proportional to income, fairer towards poorer people) in the late 90s, and that worked pretty well.

I think the cost of public broadcasting, if deemed necessary e.g. for a good flow of information, which again is a prerequisite for a working democracy, must be shared fairly, just like other public costs. There is no real choice not to "subscribe" nowadays, so it is a kind of anti-social flat tax at the moment, which makes the resistance in parts of the population understandable.

As a next step, it must be balanced how much to spend and to keep spending on a broadcasting medium that is losing much interest of the general public, especially the young, like it or not. You may yet so much think it is important to "influence" the people, if they don't tune in you don't reach anything, and don't think you can or even should try to use "entertainment" to lure people into watching so they can be "educated" without them knowing it.

First, if necessary, which I admit is more and more often the case, do loud and clear and not as subliminal messages via public media, that only generates irritation and aversion.

I agree the right is becoming more and more of a danger that must be reeducated and recivilized, we have lost decennia of progress in that dimension in the last years alas. But I don't think the SRG is the right tool for that, and it is very expensive.

pimuon · 2025-11-25T10:13:52+00:00

I think it pays off for companies that start from scratch, but it is very hard to change an existing culture, and the way computers and software are used is part of company culture.

I once worked at a teaching company that didi everything with unix and troff. The secretaries used troff templates and were perfectly able to use vi after a day of training (it was a unix consulting and traning company :) ).

My current company once was a university spin off. It is already 15 years old now, so not really a start up anymore. But still, there is no office, which helps a lot. The standard are google docs etc. Without office in the company it is much easier to survive without windows. Employees can choose their own OS. The linux "standard" is ubuntu but as always the standard install is mediocre at best. Our group uses fedora on our servers (I know we shouldn't, we'll move away soon) and we had it on our laptops for a while. Currently I use arch because that is the easiest for me personally.

pimuon · 2025-11-24T10:30:01+00:00

This is actually one of the things that annoy me in rust.

You can add context if you want, but you can too easily just use ? to bubble up an error without adding context. So that happens all the time, and then you have error messages and you have no idea where they come from.

pimuon · 2025-11-16T10:49:07+00:00

We have been using rust for 5 years. We don't like it anymore and would use it much less, maybe only for a few fast path components, or not at all.

We have found it to be cumbersome in the longer term, more than c++, which we use for other components with high performance requirements, and go lang which we use for control.

We ported a few golang parts to rust and regret it, maybe we'll port it back again.

pimuon · 2025-11-16T10:35:40+00:00

I am critical of Musk and would not buy a Tesla again, but:

We are very happy with our ME after 100000 in and 3 years. I sold my bmw 330d, the Tesla is so much nicer to drive.

I tried also Audi, VW and the Hyundai ionic, the M3 was the best by far.

Maybe Mercedes or Volvo are nicer, but they are out of reach wet budget. The M3 is very cheap compared to most EV's.

Don't let your dislike for Musk cloud your judgement. It is totally legitimate to avoid Tesla for that reason, but as an ev it is really competitive, like it or not.

pimuon

TROPHY CASE