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Alan Sill

@AlanSill@mast.hpc.social

Physics/cloud/data center energy efficiency/HPC. This one's for personal viewpoints and technical stuff I find cool. Open to questions and try to reply to interesting ones. Also at https://bsky.app/profile/alansill.bsky.social and https://hpc.social Slack and Discord.

923 Followers

460 Following

14 Posts

Joined November 19, 2022

NSF Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center:

https://nsfcac.org/leadership.html

GitHub:

https://alansill.github.io

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-sill-ttu/

Posts

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Jul 29, 2026

Replying to @SeanCasten@mastodon.social

@SeanCasten@mastodon.social Thanks for posting this. This is embarrassing and should lead to a total change of leadership for the Department of Energy, or at least a change of handling for their social media accounts. Fortunately we have other sources like https://gridstatus.io to show the true statistics on the overall energy usage and fuel mix in this country. A quick glance at the statistics for ERCOT and CAISO will show where other regions of the country like PJM need to aim (more solar, wind, batteries)!

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Jul 20, 2026

Replying to @deshipu@fosstodon.org

@deshipu@fosstodon.org If you're willing to open source the design, try @oshwassociation@mastodon.social

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · May 09, 2026

Replying to @glennklockwood@mast.hpc.social

@glennklockwood@mast.hpc.social Great read! (Folks, don't fall victim to the temptation for HPC smugness mentioned at the end of the article. The problem is quite hard and the points in the article about the need to do work smarter to produce fundamentally new methods and do more than just throw more cycles and hardware at the current approach are exactly on target IMO.)

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · May 08, 2026

The number and quality of these stories and the stories summarizing them all seem to be increasing. https://e360.yale.edu/features/amoc-climate-change

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · May 04, 2026

Off to Colorado for a couple of weeks. Don't miss the HPC Hallway Huddles, everyone!

https://hpc-hallway.github.io/The-Hallway/

Usually a cast of experts with a mix of new people. New participants always welcome!

The-Hallway

Welcome to HPC Hallway

hpc-hallway.org // hpc-hallway.de

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Apr 20, 2026

Replying to @rootwyrm@weird.autos

@rootwyrm Yes, it seems that most of the problems have to do with the dependencies of CASA and its many versions versus time. Various efforts have been made to put it into containers and/or LMod modules, but these are individual efforts by people and centers, and not part of the official distribution. What a pain for innocent cluster operators!

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Apr 18, 2026

One of our researchers wants us to install the #NOAA CASA tool suite, which requires FUSE mounts if I follow the recommended instructions. Any issues with enabling FUSE for general users on a cluster? (I know some tools depend on it internally but we havenʻt made this part of our routine toolkit support.) Anyone else supporting the CASA tools?

mast.hpc.social

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Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Apr 05, 2026

Replying to @kevin@mastodon.km6g.us

@kevin This is a complicated question, more so than people think. Among many attempts to explain it that you have no doubt found is this one: https://linuxize.com/post/bashrc-vs-bash-profile/ but the short answer is there is no good way to do this for everything, you need to have your use case(s) in mind and mapped out and provide for each of them. Just when you think you've got it figured out, another comes along, so try, rinse, and repeat if needed.

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Mar 27, 2026

Replying to @davidho@mastodon.world

@davidho@mastodon.world All good points, but note, most of the NSF budget has been restored. The biggest impact of the cuts right now is on staffing levels, which slows down program reviews and introduces considerable delays. Please ask everyone you know who is qualified to volunteer to be an NSF reviewer and volunteer yourself on programs not directly related to your grants. It makes a difference and the NSF staff who are still there need your help!

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Mar 03, 2026

Replying to @geerlingguy@mastodon.social

@geerlingguy@mastodon.social I’ve been wondering what to do with my Raspberry Pi Pico! But Sheepshaver does so much better than this, and there’s always https://infinitemac.org/ Thanks, though, for the Marchintosh celebration.

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Feb 14, 2026

Replying to @yaxu@post.lurk.org

@yaxu Well, of course you are welcome to think so, and thatʻs your right, but personally I prefer it to the alternatives. IMO the worst of these alterntives is MS Word, which is unworkable for any large complicated document with anything but minimal formatting requirements (and not even very good at that). With Overleaf, collaboration is possible and applying a little organizational skill can even make it pleasant.

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Mar 28, 2024

Replying to @johannes_lehmann@fediscience.org

@johannes_lehmann@fediscience.org It’s the constant dilemma:

Subscription/pay to read = access to content is limited.
Open access to read through publication charges = access to publish is therefore limited. But somehow the infrastructure to publish, store, and maintain the information costs money and someone has to pay for it. Limit publication to those who can self-host? That also creates limitations and can be intrinsically unfair. As I said, a constant dilemma.

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Dec 18, 2022

Replying to @dianna@mas.to

@dianna@mas.to Hashtags help. Movetodon, FediFinder, etc. can help you find people important to you. This is a more personal and less argumentative platform so far at least in my experience, hope you find it that way too. And welcome!

Alan Sill @AlanSill@mast.hpc.social · Dec 17, 2022

Replying to @Gargron@mastodon.social

@Gargron@mastodon.social This should clearly be the handle of your siteʻs parody account over on the bird site!

Alan Sill

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