2026-01-27 10:20:45 <KipIngram   > You know, I always thought that the Suez Canal was the only way to get ships from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, and of course it's a relatively recent thing.  I disovered recently, though, that there was canal access from the Nile to the Red Sea even back in Roman times, and consequently the Romans traded all up and down the east coast of Africa by water.  Here I am in my 60's before I
2026-01-27 10:20:47 <KipIngram   > realize this.  :-|
2026-01-27 10:23:37 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, they just probably couldnt fit Panamax size container ships thru that ancient canal ;-)
2026-01-27 10:28:11 <KipIngram   > Most likely.  :-)
2026-01-27 10:28:26 <KipIngram   > God, some of those container ships are pretty incredible.
2026-01-27 10:28:52 <KipIngram   > I guess you heard about the one a year or three back that hit a bridge in a US east coast harbor?
2026-01-27 10:29:07 <tpbsd       > the Chinese have one thats electric now
2026-01-27 10:29:27 <KipIngram   > That was big time news for a few weeks, then you stopped hearing anything about it.
2026-01-27 10:29:29 <tpbsd       > yeah, and I have a theory about that one
2026-01-27 10:29:41 <KipIngram   > Yeah?  What do you think?
2026-01-27 10:30:37 <tpbsd       > it's based on a much wider and earlier issue, namely the wests embargo on russian heavy urals fuel
2026-01-27 10:31:22 <KipIngram   > Ah.  I hadn't considered it being tied in to any of that stuff.
2026-01-27 10:31:32 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, as you may know, every refinery is specifically tailored to a specific oil supply, theyre like a big chemistry set
2026-01-27 10:31:50 <KipIngram   > Right.  Hard to shift that after the fact.
2026-01-27 10:31:59 <KipIngram   > Not impossible, but it's a big re-tooling.
2026-01-27 10:32:18 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, i'm not suprised you havent heard, news about all that stuff is verboten in the west
2026-01-27 10:32:20 <KipIngram   > Refineries are one of those things in the US that get caught in regulatory hell.
2026-01-27 10:32:50 <KipIngram   > And a lot of the ones we've got are set up for overseas crude rather than the crude common in the US.
2026-01-27 10:33:20 <tpbsd       > shortly after the urals was embargoed, three big cargo ships refueled in Singapore using alternate fuels and departed as usual
2026-01-27 10:33:25 <KipIngram   > I've long since given up on there being a real, honest "news media" in the US.
2026-01-27 10:33:31 <tpbsd       > yeah
2026-01-27 10:33:37 <KipIngram   > I used to have a lot of respect for the profession, but I've lost it over the years.
2026-01-27 10:34:07 <tpbsd       > all three of those cargo ships suffered catastrophic engine failures and their engines were totaled
2026-01-27 10:34:51 <tpbsd       > luckly they were in the ocean well out from land and although they lost steering with theie engines they didnt crash into anything
2026-01-27 10:35:22 <KipIngram   > So, are you thinking that something was DONE to the ship?
2026-01-27 10:35:30 <KipIngram   > Like an assault of some kind?
2026-01-27 10:36:05 <tpbsd       > and so started the era of cargo ships burning heavy sulphur rich crude having 'unknown' engine issues, mainly the engines dying
2026-01-27 10:36:24 <KipIngram   > If so, it seems pretty idiotic to me to do that to one that's made it to harbor.  I think that the smart move would be to just admit you  lost that round.
2026-01-27 10:36:55 <tpbsd       > no, I think that possibly (its only my theory) that like so many others, it just didnt like the fuel, the engine died and they lost steering control
2026-01-27 10:37:07 <KipIngram   > Ok, I see.
2026-01-27 10:37:32 <KipIngram   > Trying to save money by using an iffy fuel?
2026-01-27 10:37:57 <tpbsd       > remember no one can talk the root problem, the loss of the urals fuel and the historic dependency on it by most large ships
2026-01-27 10:38:21 <tpbsd       > no, I think they just havent sorted out their refineries yet
2026-01-27 10:38:39 <KipIngram   > Ok, that makes sense.  But there's a "the show must go on" mentality.
2026-01-27 10:39:03 <tpbsd       > yeah, ships must sail, just not with urals crude
2026-01-27 10:39:32 <KipIngram   > I definitely see why some people wouldn't want that talked about.
2026-01-27 10:39:36 <tpbsd       > and thats the problem. urals is unique just like all oil origins
2026-01-27 10:39:43 <KipIngram   > Especially after something like that bridge incident.
2026-01-27 10:40:17 <tpbsd       > for instance Venezuela only has heavy sulphur rich crude
2026-01-27 10:40:39 <tpbsd       > the USA has none, shale is light sweet type
2026-01-27 10:41:24 <KipIngram   > Right.
2026-01-27 10:41:39 <tpbsd       > yeah, Imagine if my theory is correct and the actions of the USA govt were respondible for that bridge collision ?
2026-01-27 10:41:53 <tpbsd       > in a very indirect way of course
2026-01-27 10:42:35 <tpbsd       > in fact there have been a lot of large ship issues like that since the urals stopped being availabe in general
2026-01-27 10:42:57 <tpbsd       > theyre just dont make the news
2026-01-27 10:43:14 <KipIngram   > Yes.  Makes total sense.  Decisions, consequences.
2026-01-27 10:43:35 <KipIngram   > "But we can't let everyone find out."
2026-01-27 10:43:54 <tpbsd       > I mean, how many ships have safely passed under that bridge without incident ?
2026-01-27 10:44:09 <tpbsd       > thousands ?
2026-01-27 10:46:20 <tpbsd       > It would be 'bad optics' for the USA govt if people started discussing it, but of course no one really cares, the govt doesnt have to wory
2026-01-27 10:47:08 <tpbsd       > life goes on, but I think it's a good theory for why reliable time tested ship engines are failing a lot thesedays
2026-01-27 10:48:44 <tpbsd       > why have the Chinese made a working electric cargo ship ? I think that for them, it's a way to avoid this problem
2026-01-27 10:49:06 <tpbsd       > they have the technology, the batteries, the motors
2026-01-27 10:49:40 <tpbsd       > and they build the ships, so for the Chinese it's not a hard problem to solve I think
2026-01-27 10:50:46 <tpbsd       > especially now that they cant ship millions of barrels of Venezuelan heavy sulphur crude every day
2026-01-27 10:51:31 <KipIngram   > Jesus, that's a lot of batteries...
2026-01-27 10:51:53 <tpbsd       > yeah, and they have to recharge at the destination!
2026-01-27 10:52:24 <tpbsd       > nuclear powered cargo ships anyone ?
2026-01-27 10:52:40 <KipIngram   > Why not?  It was almost the first thought I had just now.
2026-01-27 10:53:00 <KipIngram   > But I'm sure there would be a lot of guff about port access.
2026-01-27 10:53:06 <tpbsd       > yeah
2026-01-27 10:53:17 <tpbsd       > thats the problem
2026-01-27 10:53:29 <KipIngram   > The anti-nuclear crowd did a good job back in the day of planting the seeds of fear.
2026-01-27 10:53:47 <KipIngram   > There ARE "passively safe" designs, but most people don't seem to realize that.
2026-01-27 10:53:48 <tpbsd       > as if a container ship load of LIPO's on fire wouldnt be a serious problem in port ?
2026-01-27 10:54:08 <KipIngram   > Indeed, but it just doesn't push that "nuclear" button.
2026-01-27 10:54:12 <tpbsd       > yeah
2026-01-27 10:54:49 <KipIngram   > Nuclear reactors live in regulatory hell too, and while I haven't checked I am guessing that those regulations don't distinguish between passively safe and not passively safe.
2026-01-27 10:55:37 <tpbsd       > yeah it's a mess, yet probably one of the best ways for the west to proceed
2026-01-27 10:56:32 <tpbsd       > whan Russia finishes it's oil pipeline to China, then China can go back to Urals crude no problem
2026-01-27 10:59:44 <tpbsd       > sadly the west isnt installing 100 large solar panells a *second* like they are in China, and so we have a massive power problem
2026-01-27 11:00:06 <tpbsd       > or the wind generators, or the nuke power plants
2026-01-27 11:01:22 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, ever use Geany editor ? I see it has a LSP plugin now
2026-01-27 11:22:14 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, eww, I dont like GIT! freebsd has changed it's Ports tree to GIT and it's a large amount of data, but GIT is fragile
2026-01-27 11:23:01 <tpbsd       > until GIT completes *everything*, nothing is installed into the target directory
2026-01-27 11:55:28 <iv4nshm4k0v > What kind of 'target directory'?  Git working copy directory, or something else?
2026-01-27 11:56:29 <tpbsd       > iv4nshm4k0v, just a git clone "git clone https://git.freebsd.org/ports.git /usr/ports"
2026-01-27 11:56:51 <tpbsd       > as instructed by freebsd to clone their ports tree
2026-01-27 11:57:26 <tpbsd       > so this would be a first time clone if I could do it
2026-01-27 11:57:45 <iv4nshm4k0v > I suppose you mean that "git clone" first copies the entire project's history to ports/.git, and only then starts extracting it?
2026-01-27 11:58:00 <tpbsd       > iv4nshm4k0v, yes, thats what I mean
2026-01-27 11:58:44 <tpbsd       > and as Im on a Starlink 'standby' plan it's way too slow for such things and will never complete before a dropout
2026-01-27 11:58:58 <harper23    > You get the entire history by default. But you can reduce the depth of the history if desired.
2026-01-27 11:59:26 <veltas      > Yeah do a shallow clone
2026-01-27 11:59:37 <tpbsd       > iv4nshm4k0v, thats the other problem. a drop out terminates the process and I'd have to start again from scratch
2026-01-27 12:01:14 <tpbsd       > no, I'll abandon it for now, review later
2026-01-27 12:02:03 <tpbsd       > I have a project I want to finish and dont need the distraction, thanks for the suggestions!
2026-01-27 12:03:38 <veltas      > It's no good for the way it's being used here, but it's really useful if you're using it as intended for a single code repo where you want to be in a known state
2026-01-27 12:03:41 <veltas      > even when things go wrong
2026-01-27 12:04:32 <veltas      > Which happens to me all the time at work because of anti-virus and shared network weirdness, so I'm glad git has never gotten totally broken and I can always get it into the right state even when files get randomly busy or locked
2026-01-27 12:04:58 <veltas      > But no, git is *not* a good way to distribute large amounts of projects by source
2026-01-27 12:05:04 <tpbsd       > veltas, I'm a confirmed Fossil DVCS addict, I have zero interest in GIT
2026-01-27 12:05:32 <iv4nshm4k0v > AIUI, it /should/ be possible to clone a remote Git repository bit-by-bit.  HTTP(S)-based Git repositories use just "plain" HTTP(S) protocol (unlike, say, Mercurial and Subversion, that require their own servers), so I presume they can even be cloned by some wrapper around, say, Wget.  No idea if Git itself has any such feature.  (Aside of possibly $ git clone --filter= I've just discovered.)
2026-01-27 12:10:05 <tpbsd       > iv4nshm4k0v, the FreeBSD ports tree is pretty big and clone it this way makes it hard for those on low bandwidth makes it difficult. I guess the FreeBSD devs all have fibre ...
2026-01-27 12:11:37 <tpbsd       > but I specialise in solutions like any dedicated Forther, and I already have a workaround that's a better choice for my project
2026-01-27 12:13:52 <iv4nshm4k0v > I can't say I see much sense in big flat Git repositories, whether that happens because devs see it fit to fit as many small but largely independent subprojects into a single repository as they can, or because they put files that don't make sense to put in a largely text-only DVCS in the first place (executable binaries, PDF files, JPEGs, MP3s, etc.)
2026-01-27 12:13:52 <iv4nshm4k0v > That said, resuming a failed clone /should/ be possible.
2026-01-27 12:15:50 <iv4nshm4k0v > (That is, I'd $ git clone --shared -- ~/public/download/git/repo-2026.git .)
2026-01-27 12:15:53 <tpbsd       > iv4nshm4k0v, thanks for the tips, I may try it sometime
2026-01-27 12:51:24 <veltas      > Anyone in the UK interested in writing automated production tests for embedded defense systems ping me an email
2026-01-27 12:51:38 <veltas      > Ping me a message on IRC I mean, but you can also email
2026-01-27 12:51:47 <veltas      > Not on here
2026-01-27 13:20:35 <cleobuline  > !credit
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