2023-07-04 04:16:35 <gordonjcp   > MrMobius: any particular requirements for a VPS?
2023-07-04 04:52:50 <veltas      > KipIngram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread-local_storage
2023-07-04 04:53:01 <veltas      > You may find that article interesting for same reasons as me
2023-07-04 06:42:55 <MrMobius    > gordonjcp: no, just curious. I played around with linode for a while which is $5/month for 1gb RAM/virtual CPU
2023-07-04 06:43:42 <gordonjcp   > that's not bad
2023-07-04 06:43:53 <gordonjcp   > I use bitfolk for one, and portfast for another here in the UK
2023-07-04 06:44:08 <gordonjcp   > I know the guy that runs Bitfolk pretty well, and I kind of know the guy that runs Portfast
2023-07-04 06:44:46 <MrMobius    > I have a 10 year old HP workstation I use for compiling but it's not perfect. Sometimes I'm in places with no wifi so can't connect and at home I get a 5-10 second lag on typing when a show on Netflix starts to load so not really feasible to ssh in over wifi
2023-07-04 06:45:27 <MrMobius    > Also I move every year or two for work so all of those factors make me consider other things. Still haven't come up with the solution but cloud server has some advantages
2023-07-04 06:45:58 <MrMobius    > gordonjcp: ah nice. seems like there's a lot to choose from nowadays
2023-07-04 06:48:54 <gordonjcp   > yeah
2023-07-04 06:49:15 <gordonjcp   > you move every year or so? What do you do?
2023-07-04 06:49:22 <gordonjcp   > if you don't mind me asking
2023-07-04 07:08:59 <MrMobius    > every 1-2 years ya. I work for the govt. not in tech though
2023-07-04 07:09:39 <MrMobius    > my ideal would be something where I keep things synced between my laptop which won't have wifi at time and my server at home I ssh into from inside the house
2023-07-04 07:10:25 <MrMobius    > best I can come up with is a flash drive I move between the server and laptop but that probably won't last long before it dies
2023-07-04 07:10:54 <MrMobius    > there are Sassy in thumb drive form factor but that's begging to be snapped off it it's always in my laptop wherever I go
2023-07-04 07:11:21 <MrMobius    > Sassy=SSD
2023-07-04 07:12:11 <MrMobius    > haven't figured out yet how to keep the laptop backed up since it's off or the battery could die ate night which is one of the reasons I keep everything on the server
2023-07-04 07:23:54 <MrMobius    > maybe I can 3D print a slot for a tiny SSD and attach that to the back of the laptop screen with a very short USB cable
2023-07-04 08:24:30 <KipIngram   > veltas: Thanks for that link.  Nice to see the "formal treatment" of things I've been thinking about.
2023-07-04 08:24:57 <KipIngram   > MrMobius: Looks like I'm paying $16 a month.
2023-07-04 08:26:15 <KipIngram   > :-)  Ronald Reagan once said that the nine most frightening words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm hear to help."
2023-07-04 08:26:45 <KipIngram   > Ugh.
2023-07-04 08:26:47 <KipIngram   > HERE
2023-07-04 08:26:53 <KipIngram   > Damn it all.
2023-07-04 08:28:07 <KipIngram   > veltas: The direction I'm leaning right now is to track variable declarations while compiling the code to be associated with a "thread" and thus know how large a thread block to allocate - it would need room in it for those variables.
2023-07-04 08:28:32 <KipIngram   > I've got a register that holds the thread block's address, so implementation wise it's easy - I just index off of that register to refer to those variables.
2023-07-04 08:29:03 <KipIngram   > So it really just becomes a matter of knowing how big a block to allocate for any particular thread.
2023-07-04 08:29:17 <KipIngram   > A few are required - every thread needs sp0 and rp0, for example.
2023-07-04 08:30:11 <KipIngram   > If the thread is going to compile private code, it needs the variables that keep dictionary state.
2023-07-04 08:32:10 <KipIngram   > I think "most" variables encountered in common Forth code likely will need to be thread private.
2023-07-04 08:32:23 <KipIngram   > But sometimes I'll deliberately want something shared.
2023-07-04 08:33:04 <KipIngram   > That's why I'm thinking VARIABLE makes thread private storage, and some other word should be used to define shared variables.
2023-07-04 08:33:29 <KipIngram   > Maybe just GLOBAL.
2023-07-04 08:34:18 <KipIngram   > Or, maybe I use SYSTEM to define variables that are shared across everything, GLOBAL to define variables shared among the threads of a process, and VARIABLE for thread private.
2023-07-04 08:34:31 <KipIngram   > Those are the three obvious levels I see in my plans currently.
2023-07-04 08:35:58 <KipIngram   > Though that would be a shortcut - SYSTEM would basically be equivalent to FORTH DEFINITIONS GLOBAL <restore prior vocabulary context>.
2023-07-04 08:44:43 <KipIngram   > Well, we had a mass shooting in Philadelphia last night.  Ironic - that city's nicknamed "the city of brotherly love."
2023-07-04 08:45:06 <KipIngram   > They caught a guy heavily armed and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
2023-07-04 08:45:29 <KipIngram   > Apparently someone picked up one of his guns and shot at him, and they've arrested that person too, which makes little sense to me.
2023-07-04 08:45:50 <KipIngram   > Hopefully that's just "playing it safe" and that person doesn't have a hard time.
2023-07-04 08:46:53 <KipIngram   > Two kids were wounded, but it sounds like they're going to be ok.
2023-07-04 08:47:06 <KipIngram   > Five people killed.
2023-07-04 08:47:37 <KipIngram   > Could have been a lot worse - apparently he fired over 50 shots.
2023-07-04 08:48:16 <drakonis    > supremely awful that it keeps happening
2023-07-04 08:48:18 <KipIngram   > No motivation at all discussed so far that I see.
2023-07-04 08:48:39 <KipIngram   > Yes, it is.  Some people just get broken somehow.
2023-07-04 08:49:31 <KipIngram   > It's bad enough when the perp clearly had a "target" of some kind - this just seems entirely random so far.
2023-07-04 08:50:44 <KipIngram   > It's not very common for me to deliberately look at "news" when I wake up, but for some reason I did today and that's what greeted me.
2023-07-04 08:52:48 <KipIngram   > That and drone attacks on a Moscow airport.
2023-07-04 08:56:39 <KipIngram   > Anyway, plenty of people would argue with me on this, but I think of the person that tried to stop that shooter as pretty heroic.  Most people would just run away - he tried to DO something.
2023-07-04 08:57:23 <KipIngram   > As far as I'm concerned, you show up with a gun and start killing people you forfeit your right not to be shot at.
2023-07-04 08:58:53 <KipIngram   > But I do understand that the safest immediate action for the police to take was to arrest the guy who tried to stop him.  Just in the name of settling down the situation.  But hopefully there won't be any charges against that person.
2023-07-04 09:01:05 <drakonis    > its a fucked up state of affairs
2023-07-04 09:02:06 <drakonis    > it shouldn't have ever gotten to a level where everyone gets guns and then try to solve all of their problems by shooting at them
2023-07-04 09:03:32 <KipIngram   > Well, I agree, but I do think people should always be able to defend themselves.  And it is a fucked up situation, although my understanding is that only about one out of every 10,000 firearms in America ever causes a death by violence.  I saw some stats on it a few years ago.
2023-07-04 09:03:44 <KipIngram   > So I don't think just "taking all the guns" is the right answer.
2023-07-04 09:04:05 <drakonis    > you dont have to take away all the guns
2023-07-04 09:04:17 <KipIngram   > But we need to do SOMETHING.  I do think we should modify how we handle guns in America.  The problem is that neither side is willing to really sit down and work out a compromise.
2023-07-04 09:04:40 <KipIngram   > I think we should sit down, have a sensible conversation, and hten modify the second amendment.
2023-07-04 09:04:44 <drakonis    > you can certainly take enough of them to reduce the risks
2023-07-04 09:04:47 <drakonis    > to be fair
2023-07-04 09:04:57 <drakonis    > a sensible conversation at the face of having shootings on nearly a daily basis?
2023-07-04 09:05:13 <KipIngram   > Yes, rational people still need to be able to talk.
2023-07-04 09:05:22 <KipIngram   > But on this issue they don't seem to be able to.
2023-07-04 09:05:24 <drakonis    > that ship has sailed long ago
2023-07-04 09:05:43 <veltas      > Yeah we have trouble with guns in UK right now, in London. We need to do more to get rid of them somehow
2023-07-04 09:06:33 <KipIngram   > I think there's some truth in the cliche "If we outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns."
2023-07-04 09:06:41 <veltas      > Guns are already illegal, we are just generally losing fight against crime right now. (some guns are legal but very very few guns used in crime were legal at any point on entering country)
2023-07-04 09:06:53 <KipIngram   > Yes, your situation is different from ours.
2023-07-04 09:07:03 <veltas      > There are exceptions where someone blows their wife's head off with a musket
2023-07-04 09:07:07 <KipIngram   > More like the drug situation in America.
2023-07-04 09:07:17 <KipIngram   > We've outlawed a bunch of drugs, but they're still around nonetheless.
2023-07-04 09:07:28 <drakonis    > the thing is
2023-07-04 09:08:03 <drakonis    > gun acquisition is entirely unrestricted at this point
2023-07-04 09:08:13 <drakonis    > anyone can get these and it has led to shootings all the time
2023-07-04 09:08:18 <KipIngram   > Yes.
2023-07-04 09:08:50 <KipIngram   > I think we need to do something.  The problem is that amendment, though.  The Founding Fathers never dreamed we'd be in a situation like this.
2023-07-04 09:09:02 <KipIngram   > The amendment is too "blanket."
2023-07-04 09:09:15 <drakonis    > and people use the constitution to justify a number of terrible things
2023-07-04 09:09:26 <KipIngram   > But I'm not willing for us to become a country that just ignores is Constitution whenever we feel like it.
2023-07-04 09:09:32 <KipIngram   > So we need to go through the proper process here.
2023-07-04 09:09:44 <KipIngram   > s/is/its/
2023-07-04 09:10:22 <drakonis    > it already has done that
2023-07-04 09:10:32 <drakonis    > its just that the constitution only comes up as a shield when its convenient
2023-07-04 09:10:53 <KipIngram   > To some extent, yes, and I oppose all of those incidents of "ignoring."
2023-07-04 09:11:10 <KipIngram   > I'm definitely a "strict interpretationist."
2023-07-04 09:11:28 <KipIngram   > All the haggling over semanitics around the Constitution drives me nuts.
2023-07-04 09:11:48 <KipIngram   > Figuring out how to get it to say whatever you want it to has become an art form.
2023-07-04 09:16:45 <drakonis    > that sounds like us politics alright.
2023-07-04 09:17:30 <KipIngram   > Totally.
2023-07-04 09:17:36 <KipIngram   > It's mostly bullshit.
2023-07-04 09:18:43 <KipIngram   > I think "laws," and by that I mean pretty much all legal framework stuff, should be SIMPLE such that anyone with a high school education can understand them.
2023-07-04 09:19:15 <KipIngram   > After all, these are the rules that everyone is supposed to live by - they should be simple and clear.
2023-07-04 09:19:23 <KipIngram   > But the way we do stuff they're anything but.
2023-07-04 09:20:11 <drakonis    > things didnt get to where they are if people didnt try to abuse other laws and other people to get to where they are
2023-07-04 09:20:31 <KipIngram   > Yeah, that's true.  Someone's always trying to game the system.
2023-07-04 09:21:09 <KipIngram   > I've bought five homes during my life.  First one was back around 1988 or so; last one was in 2013.
2023-07-04 09:21:23 <KipIngram   > The stack of paperwork associated with the process has just steadily gotten thicker.
2023-07-04 09:21:48 <KipIngram   > Because people keep finding tricky ways to take advantage of other people, and the lawyers plug those holes with more paperwork.
2023-07-04 09:22:14 <KipIngram   > 9/11 stepped it up a bunch too - starting after that you had to explain where the money you're buying the house with came from.
2023-07-04 09:22:26 <KipIngram   > You can't just show up at closing with a briefcase of cash anymore.
2023-07-04 09:22:32 <KipIngram   > Figuratively speaking.
2023-07-04 09:23:01 <KipIngram   > Gotta document  "legitimate income."
2023-07-04 09:23:21 <KipIngram   > Which, if you're employed, is pretty straightforward, but the point is that before 9/11 you didn't have to jump all those hoops.
2023-07-04 09:24:03 <KipIngram   > And this is just an example, of course - the same continuing complication has been going on on all fronts.
2023-07-04 09:27:24 <KipIngram   > Actually make that six homes - I bought a condominium in northwest Austin the year I was between marriages, but I sold that after my wife and I got married.
2023-07-04 09:28:34 <KipIngram   > Easy to forget that one, because it "felt like an apartment."
2023-07-04 09:31:13 <KipIngram   > Hey, the tvtropes.org website is kind of fun.  All these names they have for the different tropes.  Quite involved.
2023-07-04 09:31:41 <KipIngram   > That article I linked last night on the Faust series went through all of its tropes.
2023-07-04 09:32:12 <KipIngram   > I like the "Xanatos Gambit."
2023-07-04 09:32:15 <KipIngram   > https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit
2023-07-04 10:33:40 <drakonis    > ah... these sure are something
2023-07-04 10:35:05 <MrMobius    > writing lots of 6502 assembly for this forth calculator and I really miss MIPS now
2023-07-04 10:35:12 <MrMobius    > I felt spoiled :P
2023-07-04 10:50:49 <KipIngram   > Yeah, a nice instruction set will do that.  drakonis: were you referring to the tropes?
2023-07-04 10:50:59 <drakonis    > yes
2023-07-04 10:51:21 <KipIngram   > Someone really had some fun concocting all of those.
2023-07-04 10:51:50 <KipIngram   > Talk about a "nerd argument" - "NO!  It's not that trope - it's this trope, obviously."
2023-07-04 10:55:44 <drakonis    > maybe a case of too much time on their hands
2023-07-04 10:57:17 <KipIngram   > Yep.
2023-07-04 11:00:37 <KipIngram   > My supervising prof in grad school though, was once commenting on doing engine work on British sports cars, and he finished by saying "And they're fun."  And then he paused and said "And when you get right down to it, that's what life's all about."
2023-07-04 11:00:47 <KipIngram   > So, I guess I'm glad someone found themselves some fun.
2023-07-04 11:01:36 <thrig       > a manager once asked if I was having fun. I had recently spent an afternoon filling wetvacs from the floor of the server room
2023-07-04 11:18:36 <KipIngram   > :-)  SOMETIMES work is fun.
2023-07-04 11:18:53 <KipIngram   > Sometimes it sucks, and most of the time it's just painfully routine.
2023-07-04 11:19:33 <KipIngram   > I don't mind the routine as much as I used to.  There's some comfort in having a nice reliable crank I can turn to pay my bills.
2023-07-04 11:20:22 <KipIngram   > I've actually had a fair bit of fun the last 7-8 months, crafting this new test ecosystem for these drives.
2023-07-04 11:21:31 <KipIngram   > Initially I was delivering folders full of graphs, and folks didn't seem to like that much.  But this new pdf / spreadsheet payload seems to be making them happy.
2023-07-04 11:23:26 <KipIngram   > I collect these log files as well - just output from commands we can send to the drives that give us a whole mess of internal metrics.  A guy over in Zurich wrote some scripts that process those and offer up the results via a web portal.  I was working on something similar at the time, but he got there first so I shelved mine.  Anyway, I am also automatically pushing my logs into that system as part of
2023-07-04 11:23:28 <KipIngram   > delivering each job.  So I'm hoping the "reporting" end of things is dealt with for a while.
2023-07-04 11:24:19 <KipIngram   > The PDF file is good for showing to executives, and also useful along with the Zurich portal for the developers.
2023-07-04 11:47:57 <KipIngram   > I was a little annoyed at the time over the other guy writing those scripts - it felt a little like he was scooping the input out of my sandbox.
2023-07-04 11:48:17 <KipIngram   > But I don't know that I would have pulled together something as nice as his setup, so oh well.
2023-07-04 14:35:17 <veltas      > I can't complain with work at the moment as I'm working on an IPMI BMC which is fun (to me)
2023-07-04 14:36:53 <veltas      > If I had to maintain this for the rest of my career I'd be happy, although there's zero chance of that. If they don't find heavier things for me to do within 10 years then someone will come along and just release a chip that does everything, in a country we're allowed to buy from
2023-07-04 14:39:14 <thrig       > solution: make it impossible to buy chips from anyone
2023-07-04 14:39:36 <veltas      > There is a chip that does what we want, but the source country has ruled it out
2023-07-04 14:42:30 <veltas      > Ah I love websites that scale everything to window width so I can't zoom out......
2023-07-04 14:48:11 <veltas      > There is this thing called "OpenBMC" but it looks incredibly heavy, I don't understand why they though Linux was a good shout for this
2023-07-04 14:49:16 <veltas      > I guess it works for server blades that have essentially a SoC doing IPMI but we don't have room for that
2023-07-04 14:57:24 <veltas      > Yeah it looks like you can configure it to use something like 24MB of RAM! Well I'm working with 128K :)
2023-07-04 15:07:28 <KipIngram   > veltas: So is the problem that you guys don't want to buy from certain countries, or that certain countries won't sell to you?
2023-07-04 15:08:14 <veltas      > Cannot buy from certain countries
2023-07-04 15:08:28 <veltas      > Either because it would reflect badly on us or export restrictions
2023-07-04 15:08:49 <KipIngram   > Yeah - and it would make your customer dependent on that country in a way that might be undesirable.
2023-07-04 15:08:54 <veltas      > Yes.....
2023-07-04 15:10:41 <KipIngram   > So this looks like a fairly useful site.  It's Microsoft, which I don't want to actually use, but I imagine the information here is compatible with a lot of terminal emulators:
2023-07-04 15:10:43 <KipIngram   > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/
2023-07-04 15:10:57 <KipIngram   > Fairly big hierarchy of stuff there, having to do with Windows Terminal.
2023-07-04 15:11:20 <veltas      > Not sure what you're trying to say
2023-07-04 15:11:29 <veltas      > It's specific to Windows Terminal
2023-07-04 15:11:36 <KipIngram   > Information related to terminal control sequences and so on.
2023-07-04 15:11:51 <veltas      > I don't see any
2023-07-04 15:11:54 <KipIngram   > Somewhere in there, though, I thought I saw things like ANSI sequences.  I didn't really study it, though - maybe I'm wrong.
2023-07-04 15:12:06 <KipIngram   > I'll look it over some more later - may have to toss it.
2023-07-04 15:12:29 <KipIngram   > Certain aspects of the terminal interaction stuff is sort of hard to find documentation on.
2023-07-04 15:12:32 <veltas      > Yeah I don't think I see anything in there
2023-07-04 15:12:43 <veltas      > Windows Terminal is crap
2023-07-04 15:12:52 <KipIngram   > Well, bummer.  But then at least I get the pleasure of kicking a MS resource to the curb.  :-)
2023-07-04 15:13:03 <veltas      > It's bloated, slow, burns holes in the ozone, kicked my dog...
2023-07-04 15:13:23 <KipIngram   > i really would like to find a resource that covers ALL of that terminal interaction stuff - every shred of it - in one place.
2023-07-04 15:13:53 <veltas      > There was a time when I applauded MS for MSDN, that is long gone. They have done a terrible job maintaining their info since
2023-07-04 15:16:22 <thrig       > also buggy, a rust irc client had to set non-blocking on the stdio descriptors to workaround windows bugs, which of course breaks things on unix
2023-07-04 15:17:21 <veltas      > You used to get a massive file called win32.hlp with a Visual C++ disc that had most of the windows API on it with enough docs to be dangerous
2023-07-04 15:17:39 <veltas      > These days we've got the internet and it's a struggle to find shit
2023-07-04 17:07:30 <veltas      > Wait what, Oracle have free VMs?
2023-07-04 17:21:36 <veltas      > I think it's time to move all my computing to a free cloud VM and just occasionally back up my data to a laptop or something
2023-07-04 17:22:21 <veltas      > Yeah I think I hate myself enough to do that to save the £70 I spend on digital ocean a year
2023-07-04 17:35:22 <KipIngram   > Where did you see the bit about free VMs?
2023-07-04 17:49:56 <KipIngram   > Oh, I think I found it.
2023-07-04 18:30:09 <KipIngram   > Ok, got that set up - have a nice little Rocky 9 VM rolling.  Meager resources, but... free.
2023-07-04 18:30:25 <KipIngram   > Oracle's process for setting that stuff up was annoyingly obtuse.
2023-07-04 18:30:32 <KipIngram   > But I muddled through.
2023-07-04 20:02:02 <KipIngram   > Anyway, if you're interested go to https://cloud.oracle.com and watch out for "Always Free Resources."
2023-07-04 20:03:16 <KipIngram   > If you need to open ports, you have to do the usual stuff on your OS (firewall-cmd or iptables or whatever you do0, but you also have to modify the security lists in the web portal to your vm.
2023-07-04 20:03:44 <KipIngram   > And the instructions are not very intuitive.  I had to tinker for a while to get udp ports 60000-60002 open for mosh.
2023-07-04 20:28:45 <KipIngram   > You know, a really  nice feature of tmux is its support for scripts sending "keystrokes" into a named tmux session.
2023-07-04 20:28:56 <KipIngram   > It behaves exactly as if you typed those things in within the session.
2023-07-04 20:29:04 <KipIngram   > Has all sorts of automation possibilities.