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• Post #4243588

  Good op-ed in the star today about why it doesn't make sense to seek a "deal" with a neighbour that can't be trusted. https://archive.is/Cj7JJ

• Post #4243522

  I’ve seen this a few times now: someone vibe-codes something, doesn’t know enough to evaluate the code, and then has the audacity to email an expert to invite them to review the code for them. 😡

• Post #4015329

  RE: https://mas.to/@brian_gettler/116963836209710484 "AI future at U of T" "U of T’s AI Kitchen" "AI’s transformative capabilities" "U of T’s path toward becoming a responsible, AI-ready institution" The people in charge are completely nuts! They are just making up words like they are planning for an IPO but have no idea what they are talking about.

• Post #3999522

  Any suggestions on how I can get access to a Windows machine that runs on a CPU supporting AVX512 instructions? I don't usually use Windows, but I'd like to test my code on Windows. #hpc #windows

• Post #3995437

  Due to some UI glitch my browser now persistently shows an emoji selector of angry emojis on all windows. Is it trying to tell me something?

• Post #3858517

  Not great in this extreme weather year: GOES-East (GOES-19) experienced an anomaly, is not transmitting data, and restoration of service is TBD. There is a backup satellite apparently but I'm not sure how long it would take to switch over operations.

• Post #3699989

  Kohlrabi

• Post #3636189

  I need some help: I'm self-hosting the documentation to a scientific software package https://rebound.hanno-rein.de. This is for a small audience and it's a small, static website. Yet, crawlers have recently been hammering my server with stupid requests that make it very slow for normal users. The requests come from residential/VPN IP ranges and usually only include one request per IP. I want to block them, or slow them down. But I don't know how. 1/N

• Post #3553714

  You've got a smart watch? Shrug. I had one almost 30 years ago. Let me introduce you to the onHandPC, also called Ruputer in Japan. As the name suggests, it's a wristband computer with a 16-bit 3.6 MHz CPU and 2 MB memory. It has a serial and IR interface. The cool thing is that it comes with a software development kit and you can write software in C for it. I didn't really understand C at the time. In particular pointers were a complete mystery to me. #retrocomputing #smartwatch

• Post #3433040

  I was at the #ISC26 High Performance Computing conference this week - first conference like this for me. Very interesting. Learned a lot. And I gave a talk on visualization which people seemed to like. But as one of the speakers pointed out, the exhibition hall starts to look like a plumbing convention. This image shows one of these "hyperscaler" computer racks. Each using >2MW of power. The use case is AI of course. And if you know me at all, you probably can guess my opinion on th...

• Post #3157960

  University #enshittification: the wifi was down/slow this week. Probably some firewall issue. The IT people sent out a campus wide email acknowledging the issue and stating that they have contacted their vendor. Because of course they outsourced it. They outsource absolutely everything. Zero in-house expertise remaining.

• Post #3157959

  Baby snapper 🐢 and its big brother. #algonquinpark #ontario

• Post #3157958

  Guess who saved another 14 Cisco VoIP phones from the dumpster. I don't know yet what to do with all of them... if anyone knows a small town who is in need of a telephone network...

• Post #3157957

  I got another interview request regarding SpaceX orbital data centres. Clearly this is just hype for the IPO. So I’m a bit conflicted about whether I should agree to the interview or not. I don’t have anything good to say about the idea, but at this moment any publicity seems like good publicity. Any thoughts @sundogplanets?

• Post #3157956

  I think most people here would probably agree that the AI bubble is about to burst at some point. But I’m not sure people really appreciate that governments will probably intervene because these companies are now considered too big to fail. So we’re all going to pay the price for this BS.

• Post #1847569

  There is a new study out which shows that physics based weather prediction is better than #slop based predictions when it comes to extreme weather events. This shouldn't really be surprising to anyone who has studied physical or chaotic systems. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec1433

• Post #1812307

  I got a few of these cooling pads from a doctors office. Ingredients are Calcium Ammonium Nitrate and Water. Can I use it as fertilizer? If so any suggestion on whether I need to dilute it?

• Post #1646926

  I've made a small update to my Alt Weather Canada app. You can now add multiple widgets with forecasts for different locations on your homescreen. The app is still free, ad-free, tracking-free, AI-free, and open source! https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/altweathercan/id6737521465 #ios #foss #canada #weather #onstorm

• Post #1196537

  New long-read article about light pollution and overcrowding low Earth orbit with satellites: "This will limit our access to space forever," says Hanno Rein. https://www.cnet.com/science/space/features/satellite-overcrowding-space-junk-low-earth-orbit-starlink/

• Post #984854

  C doesn't have inheritance of any sort. But you can achieve basically the same with some pointer casting trickery. I'm very tempted to implemented that for the different integrator options in REBOUND. But I worry that I'm trying to be too smart...

• Post #984853

  I have to admit, it's more fun to follow the #artemis mission than I expected. It's just nice to see a rocket launch/mission that has no direct commercial goals. I'm not super excited about the rocket itself. It looks like it works well, but it's just way too expensive and the single use aspect seems a step backwards.

• Post #984852

  That was a bit awkward but consider me impressed, he didn't screw it up.

• Post #984850

  This is a typical Canadian approach, especially when it comes to operating public spaces and buildings: lettings good things decay due to negligence, indifference, incompetence, or a combination of the former until the only option is a complete teardown and rebuild and no history is left. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/this-planetarium-at-u-of-t-was-created-as-a-gift-to-citizens-decades-later-its-being-demolished/article_370da4e1-038c-49d4-a715-20e554e21a0c.html

• Post #912455

  I've been watching a few coding videos on youtube lately. I have to say, this is much more enjoyable both from an entertaining and an educational point of view than one might expect. Here's an example where someone who is normally writing C code tries out Swift for the first time. I can very much relate to most of the reactions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTP5c4NqA8k

• Post #912454

  Long shot: Can anyone here help me with configuring a Cisco 7821 phone so I can connect to a non-Cisco SIP provider? It seems that this is not officially supported but kind of works for some people with the specific model I have. But I've failed adapting any of the XML configuration files that I found online. And the console logs from the phone are not really helpful to a non-expert. #voip #cisco #sip

• Post #912453

  Another small victory! I've successfully replaced a broken switch in my car. I had to take apart the entire door panel for that. Thank you random person who posted a video on how to do that on youtube. And thank you aliexpress for sending me a very cheap spare part for my 17 year old car.

• Post #912452

  I certainly love a good source code leak!

• Post #912451

  In my quantum mechanics class, I often found myself having to make excuses for things non-relativistic quantum mechanics can't explain accurately. So in the last lecture today, I gave the students a taste of quantum field theory. I suspect that went a little over their heads but maybe it sparked some interest.

• Post #912450

  My PhD student Michael Poon participated in the UofT finals of the 3 Minute Thesis Talk competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kxke7OUM6w

• Post #912449

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@iceoutbot/116343020475990357 I see puddles forming on the ice!