Show Idle (>14 d.) Chans
← 2017-04-09 | 2017-04-11 → ↓
ben_vulpes: christ what even is the point of a unary predicate in a language without closures
ben_vulpes: oh i know, just establish some more global state
ben_vulpes: you know, before calling the unary predicate
ben_vulpes: EACH TIME
ben_vulpes: wait hang on i have a different critique
ben_vulpes: what even is the point of programming languages that don't in2 closures
ben_vulpes: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-01-21#1380019 << what entails "corrupted gcc"?
a111: Logged on 2016-01-21 18:33 asciilifeform: that is, using corrupted versions of gcc
ben_vulpes: whatever, does not matter in the slightest.
mircea_popescu: real men just goto where the closure is!
ben_vulpes: oh is that how the world works
mircea_popescu: gotta object orients to orient objects yo!
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu is in high spirits, must be nuts deep in something other than cpp
mircea_popescu: lol. guess so huh.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 05:34 ben_vulpes: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-01-21#1380019 << what entails "corrupted gcc"?
asciilifeform: !#s gcc5
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes ^ .
a111: Logged on 2016-09-13 17:49 asciilifeform: even gcc5 no longer does.
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: what was the reasoning behind your call that replacing trb's boostisms with c++11isms was an assault on grandfathers pistols? trb mustest compile with old gcc's?
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: my contention was that it must compile with < 5 .
asciilifeform: whatever 11isms are properly implemented (with 0 special cases) in 4.9 -- fair game
Framedragger: asciilifeform: just fyi i attempted a single wget (single http request) of sadmods, got 500, phuctor main page now 500's :/
Framedragger: prolly needs flask restart.
asciilifeform: lol, thousand 'postgres: phuctor phuctor [local] SELECT' processes zombieing
Framedragger: huh, queries should be cancelled upon a failed http request.. if backend connects to db over tcp socket perhaps check https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/runtime-config-connection.html#GUC-TCP-KEEPALIVES-IDLE
asciilifeform: i'ma ask everybody, nicely, to quit all automated querying of phuctor.
asciilifeform: Framedragger: 'In sessions connected via a Unix-domain socket, this parameter is ignored and always reads as zero.'
Framedragger: that's why i preluded with "if backend connects over tcp"
asciilifeform: it doesn't.
asciilifeform: also i'm getting 20+ (!) second disk latencies.
Framedragger: have you checked if maybe google army is attacking you now that you've changed the robots policy?..
asciilifeform: nope, it isn't.
asciilifeform: there's a megatonne of zombie postgres liquishit hanging.
asciilifeform: to the point where restarting the thing doesn't even do anything.
Framedragger: (there's a `pg_terminate_backend(process_id)` which can be fed rows from `pg_stat_activity`, just fyi)
asciilifeform: i have 0 idea what this means.
Framedragger: asciilifeform: does the new-factor/key-adder write to db under a different db user than the db reader which reads data for the web backend?
asciilifeform: well, phuctor is back up, until somebody else starts auto-massaging it.
danielpbarron: phuctory reset
trinque: haw
Framedragger: the following should output stale queries:
Framedragger: COPY (SELECT pid, client_addr, query_start, query FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state <> 'active' ORDER BY client_addr ASC, query_start ASC) TO '/tmp/pg-zombies.txt' WITH CSV DELIMITER ' ';
asciilifeform: i know what the stale queries are, already.
asciilifeform: they're normal requests.
Framedragger: oh but like, *active* requests? the use of the word "zombie" implied to me that the web requests themselves may have already died. okok.
asciilifeform: Framedragger: they're zombies in the sense that there were a thousand+ of the liquishit processes whereas there never has any business being > 1 or 2.
asciilifeform: requests with no serious hope of being serviced.
Framedragger: aha ok.
BingoBoingo: Phuctor, in addition to.. you know its stated mission, is possibly the greatest intelligence gathering exercise so far in "single box vs. hordes" problem
asciilifeform: nah that'd be trilema
phf: i take it phuctor is more like btcbase. a couple of thousand requests a day, with an occasional massive bot spike
asciilifeform: loads per se can't hose it, in theory; there is a cache
asciilifeform: submits, however, can.
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Trilema is "common" application of single box. Many people thusly blog. Phuctor is great because it is a big ball of weird RDBMS-BDSM
phf: they laughed at me when i said btcbase doesn't use a database, who's laughin now
asciilifeform: phf: i've been searching for how to lose the db, for years now.
asciilifeform: as soon as i figure it out -- it's gone.
trinque: are we doing the "I used it wrong; this proves my political views" thread again?
asciilifeform: trinque: 'there is a right-also, and asciilifeform is a moron' is not a political statement ?
trinque: there are many reasons to hate rdbms. "cannot *at all* run something like phuctor" is not one of them
phf: trinque is the resident psql guru, he managed to wire his 50 request lisp process to a postgresql database
trinque: yes phf; this is the only work I've ever done
trinque: live in a garbage can with g_l
asciilifeform: i'm quite certain that it ~could~, trinque . just not at acceptable cost.
phf: tmsr work is primarily defined by its voluntary nature, if i had to do things same way i do it at the office i wouldn't bother. ascii doesn't know intricacies of psql from his day job, and i think it's cruel and inhuman to make him study psql ~as part of tmsr work~. it's not the kind of know how you get to learn by sitting down with a cup of tea and a large printout..
trinque: I think it's dishonorable to prattle on in propaganda mode when there are plenty of statements to be made about why the thing's shit from the position of understanding it.
trinque: nobody's forcing him to use it; now that he has one, I've made a few suggestions to lessen the pain
asciilifeform: all of the constructive suggestions thus far ( from trinque et al ) require full rewrite.
phf: ascii actually can criticize postgresql from the position of understanding. knowing intricacies of psql is not knowledge (rtrees, caching, etc.), it's trivia ("you have to turn lever 3 and depress button Y"). ascii knows what he needs to express, but he can't express it directly, because he's running against architectural constraints of his tool. from that perspective a general "databases are shit" is an entirely valid perspective.
trinque: this conveniently missing the point is shameful on you both.
trinque: he *has one*
trinque: can either bitch like a woman or fix the pain now and also move off later
asciilifeform: what part of 'the suggested fixed require full rewrite' is hard to understand ?
asciilifeform: and of 'full rewrite, regardless of what else it features, will NOT feature sql'
trinque: so then your site is going to be down in teh meantime because of a combo of prior technical decisions and present political ones
asciilifeform: the site is up trinque
asciilifeform: and if folks insist on trying to bring it down, i will ban as much of ipv4 space as i have to.
asciilifeform: until rewrite.
trinque: I will wager one source of load is my RSS thing, which you bitched wasn't producing results quickly enough
asciilifeform: actually that part creates 0 load, it gets cache ~always
asciilifeform: worx great.
trinque: phf: knowing how to use it is trivia, but tell me, where can I put a dataset now, which I do under no circumstances want to lose, which must be served concurrently to a wide number of clients, which, and so on
deedbot: http://trilema.com/2017/how-to-take-control-of-your-provider-a-guide-for-whores/ << Trilema - How to take control of your provider, a guide for whores.
trinque: I'm not going to recite how mvcc works to you, nor what atomicity is, you're being dishonest
trinque: none of that is trivial, and I'm aware of one mature such example in common lisp, and you have to pay for it
trinque: which is fine, but I assume you're not over there running btcbase on allegro cache
trinque: for that matter, your common lisp can't even dump a textual representation of its entire state which can be loaded elsewhere disregarding arch
trinque: but we weren't talking about that; we were sidewinding onto whatever
asciilifeform: trinque ^ this is both true and imho a serious problem
asciilifeform: ( afaik -- mccarthy's lisp -- ~could~ )
trinque: no reason it can't; certainly should
trinque: anyone who thinks I'm defending SQL here is deaf
phf: you're just ranting
asciilifeform: re lisp state -- not sure this is doable on unix -- how do you dump and restore textual representation of posix threads ? fd's ?
Framedragger: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641384 << not to rain on your parade but -- without any currently active crawl process, i've tried to wget /sadmods by hand just now, just to have a single copy to serve on the cached site. so far two 504 in a row
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:19 asciilifeform: and if folks insist on trying to bring it down, i will ban as much of ipv4 space as i have to.
Framedragger: (so not exactly an 'insist to bring it down')
trinque: phf: you can avoid the point as you choose. "there is a better land and we'll be there someday; don't eat til we get there, best food on earth, they have." has sunk many companies, and many people
asciilifeform: Framedragger: you ~could~ stop hammering it
Framedragger: asciilifeform: i'm not hammering it. check your logs.
Framedragger: i'm trying to request a copy of sadmods.
asciilifeform: didntcha just say 'consecutive 504s'
asciilifeform: what's the 'consecutive' mean if not hammering.
Framedragger: that's wget, it *retries*.
Framedragger: after it gets a 504, it tries again. sequential.
asciilifeform: didn't i ask nicely to quit this ?
asciilifeform: all of it
asciilifeform: anything with auto-retries.
Framedragger: i'm running wget *by hand*. wtf. you expose a href on the site. i try to get it. it fails. ?
asciilifeform: at any rate, thing loaded here.
Framedragger: but that's the last time i brought this up. i wanted to clarify that nobody's hammering it.
asciilifeform: it will start loading again for other people when Framedragger stops autowgetting it.
trinque: lol!
asciilifeform: i have actual work to do, and do not have time to babysit the process all day, every day.
Framedragger: ok this is ridiculous, i'm done
Framedragger: "your http client tries to re-request after request failed. DDoS!!"
asciilifeform: Framedragger: yes, it is weak! but no, i don't have a five-second fix
phf: trinque: my point is ~why do you do what you do~. there's no hard pressing imperative to freak out, which is the bezzle way of things anyway.
asciilifeform: 'this is a small boat, friends, please refrain from going in more than 5 at a time' 'we'll ALL go in! you should have BIGGER boat, you dummy!111'
trinque: phf: I'm speaking from the perspective that this data storage thing eventually gets solved in the republic.
trinque: can't shitbag the entire notion of "db" and expect to do that correctly
trinque: I've said before the thing needs to be split into many specific tools
trinque: still stand there.
phf: well, right, but you're not going to learn how to db by ~running~ databases. the whole "db" thing is an illusion anyway. rtrees, btrees, indexes, locking mechanisms, mvcc are all concrete algorithms, that you can implement in an adhoc manner for your task at hand and actually see how they work and what they do.
asciilifeform: as it is, sql db is a very effectively opaque black box, full of liquishit, that reliably generates full employment for millions of 'perlists' who memorized the trivia.
phf: allegro cache is actually a lot closer to how btcbase does it, than the postgresql way. internally the two are very different. if you treat both as "a database" you're not going to learn anything
trinque: no disagreement there.
phf: another alternative to doing the sql way is column stores (as an aside allegro cache is really more of a column store), where something like kdb is going to be a reference (the apl approach to databasing in general, of mmaping files with fixed size entries that you can offset into).
asciilifeform: sql is a car with a gas and break pedal for each wheel.
asciilifeform: imho life is too short to use it to study such a thing.
trinque: I would like to hear of the large firm that did their accounting on another type of db.
trinque: sincerely.
asciilifeform: trinque: i linked to an auto parts shop that does accounting on commodore64 last year...
asciilifeform: and the year before that -- somebody who used... hypercard
trinque sighs
asciilifeform: hey, trinque asked!111
trinque: they don't have a billion of anything
asciilifeform: probably not.
asciilifeform: but sure, sql is 'industry standard'. so is -- winblows.
asciilifeform: it is genuinely the worst possible argument in support of anything.
trinque: no, consider the bundle of questions that enterprise (oil firm, whatever) must ask itself on an ongoing basis
trinque: over *massive* dataset which *is* relational regardless of the db you choose
trinque: that is the standard, not some piece of software
phf: talk about political
asciilifeform: if your operation seriously relies on the db, it implements custom db, from scratch, like the hft trading folks do.
trinque: phf: the data is political??
trinque: asciilifeform: ~whole point~ is what the implemented item would look like
trinque: what problems do you encounter at that scale
asciilifeform: it won't look like sql.
phf: trinque: you've asked a question, that i was about to answer, but it turned out to be a rhetorical question, that you then used as a platform to make a political point, yes
trinque: SQL is a language
asciilifeform: because the flexibility has a price.
trinque: phf: ah, then wasn't my intention
trinque: go ahead, answer
trinque: my point was that the customer for the item has these requirements; what does the item which satisfies them begin to resemble?
phf: and you're wrong as far "everyone uses sql11". merril lynch is famous for storing massive datasets in kdb. deutsche bank uses kdb as well as a handful of other datastores (i have some knowledge here), also two of the banks that i consulted for used object stores. that's just the projects that i consulted
trinque: phf: I didn't claim everybody uses SQL
trinque: I claimed that they will satisfy all the requirements by whichever means they choose
asciilifeform: trinque: this seems tautologically true; it doesn't tell us much
phf: most of them ~also use sql~. but likewise there's no such thing as "the database" there's also no such thing as "the database company uses to store its data". banks typically have 50-100 different large data stores, that serve different purposes
phf: but the reason that they don't all use sql, is because sql is really bad for certain narrow kinds of tasks and suboptimal for a slightly larger set of tasks
phf: anything involving real time data, anything involving time series, anything involving datasets > 100mil
phf: but on the other hand also anything involving objects of non-trivial topology (that's where you want object stores)
trinque: so we agree that this thing called "database" is really distinct tools which some idiot welded together
trinque: say atomic writes on a filesystem, transactional versioning atop that, ...
trinque: or referential integrity, indispensable for bitcoinating
jhvh1: shinohai: The operation succeeded.
trinque: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641468 << what ends up being the problem in an environment with this many data stores?
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:51 phf: most of them ~also use sql~. but likewise there's no such thing as "the database" there's also no such thing as "the database company uses to store its data". banks typically have 50-100 different large data stores, that serve different purposes
trinque: I'll tell you; the glue between them by weight comes to dominate
trinque: (he's going to claim I'm arguing for ubiquitous SQL again and miss the point)
phf: what ~is~ the point you're trying to make? you say things, i address them, you immediately move on to some other point
shinohai: The only way to truly settle this matter is with swords.
trinque: phf: I'm having the same experience over here!
trinque will re-engage this in a bit
phf: trinque: ~what is the point you're trying to make~
asciilifeform also puzzled
Framedragger: very unrelated old story for good humour in the forum: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery
trinque: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641431 << that this is wrong, and letting data access patterns ~between distinct algorithmic components of your system~ be built in ad-hoc manner destroys fits-in-head for the entire system
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:37 phf: well, right, but you're not going to learn how to db by ~running~ databases. the whole "db" thing is an illusion anyway. rtrees, btrees, indexes, locking mechanisms, mvcc are all concrete algorithms, that you can implement in an adhoc manner for your task at hand and actually see how they work and what they do.
trinque: I can't sit down with something like that and ask it ANYTHING
trinque: because I'll be here for years creating glue
trinque: that is a statement of the ~problem
trinque: and not a statement of any particular solution
trinque: the database as (extremely poorly) implemented by sql rdbms is a generalization of the glue
lobbes: But re: fits in head. Isn't phf's/alfs argument that you cannot really even audit said generalized glue?
trinque: you have to be able to audit *two* things; the code, and the data, and independently
trinque: the guy who loves hard theory is going to claim the latter always derives from the former
trinque: the manager says... sure buddy
lobbes: I do come from the 'let the data speak for itself' school, so that makes sense to my limited understanding
phf: the "glue" point is a strawman, because you don't know how i write my code. as far as problem/solution though
phf: writing out each one of those concerns separately will teach you how to do it (or whether it can even be done, like with "atomic file system")
phf: but i don't think that working with a black box of rdbms will
phf: yes, you can't sit down with a collection of independent algorithms combined in a specific way and use it in a different way without writing extra code, but that's what repl is for
phf: ok, i guess we both know what the problem is. my solution is "study db related algorithms until you know enough to write a db", your solution, unless i misunderstand, seems to be "use an existing database a lot". i don't understand how learning, say, postgresql will get you from not knowing anything about db internal design to writing your own
trinque: I'm sure I've said SQL dbs are terrible a hundred times now.
trinque: and not to use them
trinque: asciilifeform did, so I didn't mind trying to help with that car wreck, having been in plenty of them myself
trinque: I don't criticize that he used it; I do all the time for lack of alternative which has the properties I want
trinque: and I agree with phf that my recourse is to write the thing I want
trinque: neither asciilifeform nor I did in particular cases due to practical tradeoffs of taking that time
trinque: the things pg did exceptionally well never come up in the "omg db sux" thread
trinque: and I'd question the ability of anyone to replace it who didn't bother with that list of things which has fuck all to do with SQL
asciilifeform: the things winblows does exceptionally well also ~never come up in discussions by sane folx.
trinque: yep, I'm out of this thread.
asciilifeform: and my contention is that 'replacing sql' is guaranteed to fail, the problem it solves is intrinsically braindamaged.
phf: in db sucks threads you necessarily talk about pain points. i don't think ~anybody~ here disputes that postgresql is a solid piece of engineering
phf: i'm not sure it's worthwhile to fetishize that quality either. if you attempt to write a db from scratch, postgresql internals is not the first place to look.
phf: but i don't think you're even talking about cracking open the covers? so what does the knowing of these "exceptionally well" things entail?
trinque: what'd you expect as a response to that first bit?
trinque: whole point having been that there are useful items in there that all got welded together
trinque: pg's versioned on-disk heap could've held trees as well as rows, eh?
trinque: and in fact does; that's how the versioning works
trinque: later versions pointing upward to previous
asciilifeform: in other lulz : https://archive.is/orEsB : 'Nick Mead, 55, discovered the five gold bars in the Russian T54/69 while restoring it to add to his collection of 150 military vehicles. He and mechanic Todd Chamberlain were filming themselves prising open the diesel tank in case they found munitions and needed to show it to bomb disposal crews. ... Instead, they pulled out the bars, weighing up to 12lb — 5kg — apiece.' and, wtf, '...
asciilifeform: After calling police, two officers took away the bars and gave them a receipt. ... A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said they could not comment “for operational reasons”.'
asciilifeform: meanwhile, elsewhere in the glorious monkey empire, https://archive.is/meEGA : 'A doctor trying to return home to his patients was dragged by his hands from an overbooked United Airlines (UAL.N) flight... Video of the incident posted to Twitter account @Tyler_Bridges shows three security officers huddling over the seated passenger, who appears to be an older Asian man, before dragging him on the floor.'
trinque: pointedly, where's my transactional, versioned, fault tolerant, *persistent* lisp system?
trinque: where disk is not some idiotic file storage but merely an implementation detail of persistence of memory
phf: well, that wasn't a rhetorical question, i was interested. so the second question remains, what does knowing entail in this case
trinque: the re-implementor of modern computing doesn't dispense with these as "you didn't really need that"
phf: that still doesn't answer my question, but the question is at the core of my point. you don't read existing implementations, you don't attempt to write new implementations, you're ~using~ a system that does these things for you. so what is ~knowing~ in this case.
trinque: I've both read postgresql source, several other db turds, written own, extended pg and mucked about heavily in internals
asciilifeform: in other lulz - https://archive.is/us9d8 -- purportedly - 'Decrypted content of eqgrp-auction-file.tar.xz' , 'Passphrase: CrDj"(;Va.*NdlnzB9M?@K2)#>deB7mN'
phf: trinque: well, then why not say it when i asked if you were talking about crackign open the source code? now i actually think that you're lying
trinque: I described how the thing writes rows to disk.
trinque: about done having my character attacked by this guy.
phf: but that's a roundabout way, and you could just read about it in a blog. if the position is that "we should study postgresql source code extensively, as a necessary prerequisite to writing our own database", then i would agree with you, but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying
trinque: I could quote myself several times in this thread saying exactly that.
phf: please do
trinque: I'm done speaking with you.
phf: if anybody else can find a trinque quote that says an equivalent of http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641538 i will apologize, otherwise i guess this stands.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 19:35 phf: but that's a roundabout way, and you could just read about it in a blog. if the position is that "we should study postgresql source code extensively, as a necessary prerequisite to writing our own database", then i would agree with you, but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying
asciilifeform: fwiw i still don't grasp what trinque was disagreeing with phf about.
trinque: you made the assumption that when I was speaking of the things merits, I was speaking of what, the lever you pull and not what it actuates?
trinque: phf: ^
trinque: you did that aiming to pin me on something easily argued
trinque: that running forward with a bare assumption and then spending the whole thread trying to smash opponent into it has been the rule with you
phf: you clearly have some twisted issues related to me. ~that was not my intent~. ~i genuinely think that you were speaking of pulling levers~ ~because there's nowhere in the thread where you attempted to dissuade me of my notion~
phf: that's why i asked you point blank if you're talking about reading code, omg
phf: if that was such an obvious assumption, then why evade addressing it? that would've saved the whole thread! my assumption was ~very obvious~ as you yourself state ~all through the thread~, because ~that's what i assumed~
trinque: I'm not defending every fucking "OP is a redditard" you throw at me
phf: then why speak to me at all? i was arguing in good faith, as an attempt to move on from our previous alteration
phf: apparently that's not how they do things down south. once a grudge always a grudge. fine. we can agree not to talk to each other at all, nor mention each others names. i was sticking to that policy, and it worked fine for me. good day.
asciilifeform: meanwhile, owned boxes list extracted from earlier: http://wotpaste.cascadianhacker.com/pastes/gO3io/?raw=true
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu et al ^
asciilifeform: ( or for anyone else with good logging on his boxes and a strong sense of lol )
asciilifeform: https://archive.is/HDN6Y << seems to be the ~same thing, organized by orifice type
asciilifeform: Run Moar Slowaris
asciilifeform: i386-pc-sco3.2v5.0.5 << apparently someone, somewhere! (in a cave?!)
trinque: phf: one thing they don't do is speak for the other, then proceed from there as if it'd been said
trinque: probably about as southern as it gets, that one
trinque: and I don't see that you get much "culture of honor" without it
lobbes: In unrelated lulz, american consumerism moves ever closer to its apex: http://m.imgur.com/Npg7IWR
CompanionCube: lobbes: eh, if people want to buy it
CompanionCube: besides, plush pillows are normally good for cuddling when you want to
shinohai: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/851307750495801348 "I'd rather have a consensus failure every year than intense constant bickering."
asciilifeform: wtf is a 'consensus failure' ?
ben_vulpes: "just remember you can't take your words back, these aren't Ethereum transactions"
mircea_popescu: you know, when trump gets elected. when the niggers who figured they were gonna use "consensus" to get the delicious chicken fail to get the delicious chicken.
mircea_popescu: "failed to do what we wanted it to do dammit"
asciilifeform: what's it called when trump hands them the delishious-syrian-chicken after all ?
mircea_popescu: i dunno, remedial of consensus failure ?
asciilifeform: reorg!111
mircea_popescu: algo asi.
shinohai imagines Vitalik reading the logs an thing mircea_popescu meant `Asi` is a new groundbreaking algorithm .....
shinohai: s/thing/thinking/
BingoBoingo: <lobbes> In unrelated lulz, american consumerism moves ever closer to its apex: http://m.imgur.com/Npg7IWR << I have seen those for sale at my local "Circle K"
deedbot: http://qntra.net/2017/04/altcointradingbot-io-is-very-sorry-for-your-loss/ << Qntra - Altcointradingbot.io Is Very Sorry For Your Loss
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641325 << this sounds like a horribru locking job.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 15:25 asciilifeform: lol, thousand 'postgres: phuctor phuctor [local] SELECT' processes zombieing
BingoBoingo: * shinohai imagines Vitalik reading the logs an thing mircea_popescu meant `Asi` is a new groundbreaking algorithm ..... << Ass Sort Integrals, some very deep "Ito calculus"
mircea_popescu: o brother. you were here for the ito experts huh.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i have it running instrumented presently, soon will see why zombies.
BingoBoingo: lol, poor usagi was a great outcome
asciilifeform: was 'ito calculus' authored by same 'genius' as 'igonvalue' ?
mircea_popescu: incidentally, for all the ulterior leonization, the actual wild west was very much like this : buncha children captive in adult bodies trying to cope.
mircea_popescu: ancient lulz.
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> o brother. you were here for the ito experts huh. << Nah, came for the drinks, stayed for the revolution.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> was 'ito calculus' authored by same 'genius' as 'igonvalue' ? << I see "ito calculus" as catchall for weaponized labels of Usagidiocy type
asciilifeform: oh hah it turns out to actually have existed, somewhere
asciilifeform: attempts to model brownian motion.
asciilifeform puts on conveyor
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 15:43 danielpbarron: phuctory reset
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it's a narrow interest item, perfectly respectable in its niche. as bb says, ended up being a sort of shorthand for internet expert in here because randos and history.
asciilifeform: actually pertinent to my current kick, even.
asciilifeform: ( models of bad rngs, such as shitoshi's )
mircea_popescu: fwiw, math finance goes through one of these every 3-4 years (ie, every time a new crop of collegiate tards ends up dominating the hiring pool)
mircea_popescu: was "gauss copula" for a while famously. was a buncha things, i have notes somewhere.
asciilifeform is not and has not ever been employed as an astrologer, cannot comment usefully
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641354 << this is an iffy discussion. trilema does very little backend but more front end. phuctor the reverse. i think they're very complementary wrt the load type.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 15:53 asciilifeform: nah that'd be trilema
mircea_popescu: as asciilifeform correctly points out, there's not THAT much of a deal to insert an article once a day / a comment once an hour and otherwise serve reads.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641360 << they didn't laugh, they were taken aback at the magic.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 15:57 phf: they laughed at me when i said btcbase doesn't use a database, who's laughin now
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641366 << lmao i take it this supply of zingers will last a while.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:03 phf: trinque is the resident psql guru, he managed to wire his 50 request lisp process to a postgresql database
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641370 << it all revolves on whether the $item is fundamental or not. if it's fundamental -- not inhuman to make him study, inhuman to allow him to squeak past without studying.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:07 phf: tmsr work is primarily defined by its voluntary nature, if i had to do things same way i do it at the office i wouldn't bother. ascii doesn't know intricacies of psql from his day job, and i think it's cruel and inhuman to make him study psql ~as part of tmsr work~. it's not the kind of know how you get to learn by sitting down with a cup of tea and a large printout..
mircea_popescu: but if not fundamental, yes inhuman.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641374 << this is a perfectly reasonable view, and it'd carry were it not be tinged by a history of asciilifeform on occasion producing overgeneral statements not because he ran against design constraints of the space but because he ran against mental constraints of his own.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:15 phf: ascii actually can criticize postgresql from the position of understanding. knowing intricacies of psql is not knowledge (rtrees, caching, etc.), it's trivia ("you have to turn lever 3 and depress button Y"). ascii knows what he needs to express, but he can't express it directly, because he's running against architectural constraints of his tool. from that perspective a general "databases are shit" is an entirely valid perspective.
asciilifeform did, ftr, end up descending into the darkest depths of his chamber of pain and cracking a b00k, with the aim of determining -- which. this op has not yet returned.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641378 << you now have cold sores. can either bitch about it or... wait for them to pass ?
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:17 trinque: can either bitch like a woman or fix the pain now and also move off later
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i did same, also not yet returned.
mircea_popescu: in unrelated news : me goes into shop where girl has bought nice shot glasses to buy shot glasses. "do you have these in a box ?" "yes" "how many in the box ?" "uhh..." nicaraguan chick is very much willing to be picked up but has nfi how many shot glasses in 3x4 case.
mircea_popescu: "15". "usure ?" "uh..." "it's 12" she counts... 12.
mircea_popescu: then... she doesn't know how much for the dozen. if they're 400 each then 12 is... 3600...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu described argentines as borderline tards but i don't recall hearing a story like this about them...
mircea_popescu: i never saw unmath this bad aside of us college educated girls.
asciilifeform: cr must be near the peak of the equator's stupification field
mircea_popescu: chick was imported though.
mircea_popescu: and nicaragua is... let's say only fit for fauna.
mircea_popescu: 40 degrees with 90% humidity sorta deal.
asciilifeform misread '90% humanity'
mircea_popescu: the humidity is the killer.
asciilifeform: it's one of the worst things in dc, it is
mircea_popescu: even in buenos aires, of every 10kw the ac ate, 7 to 8 made water.
asciilifeform: asciilifeform once switched planes in panama and ( it had outdoor walk, instead of the customary human pipe ) thought 'just like home'
mircea_popescu: btw -- i have no ac here. the girls are naked indoors. it's fabulous.
asciilifeform: i do know that there are places where the air is hot and ~dry~, and ac has no drain pipe -- but never yet been there.
ben_vulpes: i rather dislike "conditioned" air
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes aha. me too.
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: i always wished there were such a thing as an ac with a throttle
ben_vulpes: too dry, doesn't have the nasty taste of reality
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform that'd be egypt for instance.
shinohai: Now you can just have naked girls fan you mircea_popescu - win-win!
asciilifeform: summer for asciilifeform is an alternating 10min of 'hot' and 'cold'
mircea_popescu: it rained once while i was there. took 5 minutes, most of the water was gone before touching soil.
mircea_popescu: shinohai i'm not even hot, it's pleasant.
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: why the hysteresis?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you could get your ac connected to the water pipe -- like the fridges with built in ice maker.
shinohai: It's 83 degrees on my patio and sun is going down
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: what would that do ? if you cool the air, and lower the dew point, not even garden hose will make it hold any more water than remained in it after the cooling
ben_vulpes: pac nw is still extricating itself from winter
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform save on electricity through spraying it in finely i think ? not sure, never took one apart.
trinque: 77 out; I was promised warming apocalypse
trinque: best april we've had in recent memory
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: many folx here have a 'humidifier', separate gadget
asciilifeform: humidifier + ac is disaster though, damp everywhere.
asciilifeform: for the reason described earlier.
mircea_popescu: i was there in winter, so not much call for anything of the sort.
ben_vulpes: schizophrenic weather gods will continue with the increasingly bipolar weather until the humans die off adequately to restore ecological sanity
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641396 << well, solved problem in sql since a while back.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:25 asciilifeform: trinque ^ this is both true and imho a serious problem
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:31 asciilifeform: i have actual work to do, and do not have time to babysit the process all day, every day.
mircea_popescu: now you know how "www engineer" became a thing.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641422 << take it easy m'lord, jus' needs a little time.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:31 Framedragger: ok this is ridiculous, i'm done
asciilifeform: www engineer << at one point there were furnace stokers, also.
mircea_popescu: actually the english word engineer denotes furnace stoker.
asciilifeform: ( on train they were even called, in english-speaking world, engineers!! )
mircea_popescu: unlike the french word ingenieur, for instance. which comes from genius, or whatever, ingenuity
ben_vulpes: i'll take ingenues over ingenieurs any day
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641431 << there are some advantages to having a standard package of these things everyone uses (this is called maturity) and no serious drawback to calling that package "a database".
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:37 phf: well, right, but you're not going to learn how to db by ~running~ databases. the whole "db" thing is an illusion anyway. rtrees, btrees, indexes, locking mechanisms, mvcc are all concrete algorithms, that you can implement in an adhoc manner for your task at hand and actually see how they work and what they do.
asciilifeform: ( good film btw . )
ben_vulpes: sweet chevy
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: problem is, 'database' as commonly seen in sqlworld is not 'collection of btrees, rtrees, etc.' in encyclopaedic algorithmic form, but a misbegotten attempt at ai.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641436 << and yet this is exactly how multi-engine airplanes work.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:43 asciilifeform: sql is a car with a gas and break pedal for each wheel.
asciilifeform: which purports to choose a one-size-fits-all set of algos for a given data bag.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 19:16 trinque: whole point having been that there are useful items in there that all got welded together
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform this, i am aware. but i suspect the "concept of db" trinque defends is "here is the set of definitive -- because mature -- things that handle data ; fucking use it".
trinque: ^ not coming across is why the thread was ridiculous
mircea_popescu: not the nonsensical "oh, paperclip!" microsoft access / lotus 1-2-3 / novell bs approach
asciilifeform: trinque: i entirely agree re above -- there could be such a thing as 'reusable encyclopaedia of data structures'. problem is, it dun exist yet.
trinque: aha.
asciilifeform: it ~will~ exist, as a vtronic item.
mircea_popescu: well, alfie, there could ALSO EXIST SUCH A THING AS A PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER
trinque: double-aha.
mircea_popescu: now guess what the problem is.
shinohai: lolz
asciilifeform: would be a mighty fine thing, indeed.
mircea_popescu: you're both welcome now shake hands and stop being so pissy all the time. life's too square and my fruit salad too good to waste suchly!
trinque: lol. you got it boss.
shinohai still wants to see a sword duel, failing that.
mircea_popescu: anyone saw liz taylor playing a jew ?
mircea_popescu: (ivanhoe. great film. there's trial by combat!)
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641453 << the hft trading folk are about as dumb as the "serious www publishing folk". the "implement from scratch" thing is a fiction, there to justify insane and unjustifiable expense. exaclty how and exactly why any third hand "outside consultant" in third world sells random dopes on "whole new cms!!11" for their "project" so it is "for srs professional".
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 16:47 asciilifeform: if your operation seriously relies on the db, it implements custom db, from scratch, like the hft trading folks do.
mircea_popescu: but in truth and behind the scene it's 100% code reuse in the most "found on forum and pasted in" manner.
mircea_popescu: i am aware this sounds incredible. it's factual.
mircea_popescu: about half the "pro" trading houses do about half of their trading on the basis of poorly understood and badly maintained excel spreadsheets.
mircea_popescu: on it goes.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: whether or not the 'nanosecs matter and we write it in asm' hft traders are real -- or mythical -- i do not know. but if hft worked the way it is purported to work, they ought to exist.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform same relationship as between script kiddie and trojan writers
mircea_popescu: yes, someone somewhere wrote the asm
mircea_popescu: then someone piled a java machine on top of that.
asciilifeform: ( it they do not exist, it is then a piece of evidence in favour of 'hft does not actually exist, you cannot actually make any money by undercutting by nanosecond ' )
mircea_popescu: it's a complicated discussion to carry in those terms.
mircea_popescu: essentially speaking, front running is a natural crown monopoly, like hunting.
mircea_popescu: how exactly this is disbursed, whether you need rifle to hunt and then crown taxes rifles, ie, through a technically mediated barrier, or purely conventional, is not properly speaking a technical discussion.
asciilifeform: the people paying megabux for cage near nyse, nasdaq, either exist or are product of elaborate disinfo. if the former, it would make sense for them to carry out the -- comparatively inexpensive -- software optimization prior to buying $mil cage.
mircea_popescu: the people paying themselves megabux aren't going to be doing for the reason they told you they did it.
asciilifeform: now i could easily picture 'crown tax is so high, only imbecile hapsburg can afford it, so no optimize'
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform picture this : if tomorrow north korea came up with superlight hft method and tried to apply it... suddenly front running would be simply illegal.
asciilifeform: ( in combination with 'it dun matter if you make it 5ns faster, packets from goldman sachs still take magical priority on the other end, For Reasons' )
mircea_popescu: so, with some regret, i will confess that no, high finance doth not qualify as that place where they have real software (tm).
mircea_popescu: au contraire, you'd be petrified what they run on.
asciilifeform: that makes for at least 2 publicly-known designated-winners-losers equivalence classes. probably there are more.
mircea_popescu: and no, the excel mentiuon was not a throwaway joke. it is factual reality, even today.
asciilifeform: in what sense could a system that runs on excel etc. be described as 'high frequency' ?
asciilifeform: can you even get 1Hz out of it ?
mircea_popescu: ah no, separate concerns.
mircea_popescu: i didn't propose they run the hft over excel
asciilifeform: and for what does jane street co. hire ml, lisp, etc. programmers ?
mircea_popescu: that's the problem of wastage in opaque faux capitalism.
mircea_popescu: you get hired randomly.
trinque: the accountant fellow I mentioned, for $100mil scale oil contract compliance, also excel macros.
trinque: might be a feature (TM) (R)
asciilifeform: trinque: i wonder how much of this is from a cargo-cult preference for 'what programmer monkeys WOULDN'T use'
asciilifeform: 'send in a code nigger, if he barfs, our system is proper'
mircea_popescu: from what i could discern, it's because of familiarity bias.
mircea_popescu: "excel i understand" "no you don't" "but i've been using it forever" "not even that."
mircea_popescu: "it makes me feel good." "go to the strip club."
shinohai: http://archive.is/dbzpt <<< NYPD to emulate Ethereum blokechain for bodycam accountability
mircea_popescu: bwahahahha
mircea_popescu: o god that's going places.
asciilifeform: asciilifeform worked for years in places where nearly everyone stretched excel long past breaking point -- bio, chem phd folx
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform aha. i expect same reason.
asciilifeform: i found why they liked it. it wasn't even the familiarity (some walked in knowing not even it)
mircea_popescu: it's their hypercad. "When i was a wee tyke this seemed like srs bzns"
asciilifeform: it was for a quite legit reason:
asciilifeform: the short ooda loop.
mircea_popescu: this, however, is not as legit a reason as it seems.
asciilifeform: long ooda loops are ~poison~, and that excel continues to win this contest, is to the undying shame of the field
asciilifeform: folks who can tolerate unnecessarily long ooda loops when working with a comp,
asciilifeform: are called programmers
asciilifeform: and they get paid for this
asciilifeform: but really for the pain tolerance
asciilifeform: just like sewage dredgers are paid to smell shit.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i make most of my money out of being capable to use the tool that's adequate for the job whereas everyone else just goes with the fastest loop.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in sane field, the 2 are 1
mircea_popescu: this seems about as unlikely as saying "in sane russia, sexually attractive women and women with pleasant personalities are the same woman"
mircea_popescu: there's no hard guarantee such wonder is possible.
asciilifeform: we're talking about a man-made world here.
mircea_popescu: we are not.
asciilifeform: there is no justification for the liquishit. none.
mircea_popescu: well that may be.
mircea_popescu: suppose you're making pcb. instant tracing, also ?
mircea_popescu: in what parallel, if man made, universe ?
asciilifeform: right here, in the cnc mill.
mircea_popescu: heh. some problems are complex alfie.
asciilifeform: everyone laughs at excel, but microshit did not invent spreadshit. spreadshit was 'killer app', arguably, for the original micros, because it introduces a modicum of sanity to the otherwise idiotic von neumann comp
asciilifeform: makes it behave like a sane physical system, whether clockwork or circuit:
asciilifeform: where you push a rod, and it pushes; pull - and it pulls.
asciilifeform: instead of 'batching'.
asciilifeform: batching is batshit.
mircea_popescu: batching was the preferred mode of engineers. historically.
asciilifeform: it is an artifact of painful rigidity. you cannot work steel the way one works plasticine, for elementary physical reasons.
asciilifeform: machine shop has no 'putting on tool', cuts -- must be planned, and reduce to simple geometries; etc
mircea_popescu: yeah well. anthropologically relevant though, created a whole identity mythos.
asciilifeform: on a comp this rigidity does not exist ! ( when it does -- it is because of a long line of boneheads who wanted to emulate steel-cutting in all things )
mircea_popescu: possibly.
asciilifeform: btw most of the folx reading this now own a perfectly good example of a non von neumann comp and program for same -- FUCKGOATS
trinque: this'd be one of those overly broad ones.
mircea_popescu: i have no position here, merely observing the history of the thing.
mircea_popescu: !!deed for instance works fine by my eyes, but it does not pass the "monkey do, monkey see" test.
trinque: to quote my old boss, one of his better observations imo is that spreadheets (and db as discussed in thread) are tools for classification and distinction
mircea_popescu: trinque the issue is that just because it felt convenient to the wee tyke it doesn't follow it is ~useful~.
mircea_popescu: cocaine is the eminent example. it FEELS like it does things to you. it does not therefore HELP.
mircea_popescu: and this goes directly to all the "no mp, dope totally makes you a better thinker" threads.
trinque: the vast majority of the accountant guy's job is defining categories, listing their properties, relating them to each other
lobbes: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641735 << place I'm currently contracting at, a big bank in southeast (you can prolly guess), it is literally written in policy:no sql allowed, only excel
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 23:58 trinque: the accountant fellow I mentioned, for $100mil scale oil contract compliance, also excel macros.
lobbes: Literally
trinque: visicalc and descendants leaned most this way, and thus he still uses that when alternatives aparrently exist
mircea_popescu: lobbes what happens when they starty paying the btc ransoms ?
trinque: lobbes: of the NoSQLs of which I'm aware, that's the saddest
mircea_popescu: you realise all it takes is for someone to salt the parking lot with hello kitty usbs.
asciilifeform: ( asciilifeform guesses : massive golden toilet backuptrons installed )
lobbes: Tis a purely political reason, of course
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform backup <-> realtime. iffy shit.
trinque: mircea_popescu: what'd the guy's classification and distinction device look like in the alternative?
mircea_popescu: i am not proposing an alternative for that function. doctor isn't in the line of proposing replacement for cocaine, and from the "i wanna feel good" perspective the whole pharmacopoea is a waste of space.
trinque: or biologist, goes on safari, starts catalog of observations, begins drawing relationships between them
lobbes was dismayed when I came in, automated a 40 hr excel proccess down to about 10mins just by using sql (access of all the god awful things) only to be told it was verboten
mircea_popescu: let the man play with his excel and feel happy, just like some writers prefer to sketch their novels in gf's faeces on bathroom floor. none of this makes gf shit an economically relevant inkwell system.
lobbes: Now I pour my brain into tmsr, much more rewardinf
lobbes: *rewarding
asciilifeform: lobbes: if you take work as a programmer where they program ~meat~ -- don't be surprised
mircea_popescu: lobbes see, because they made the mistake of banning things instead of simply banning stupid.
mircea_popescu: you never want to ban things.
lobbes: Yup
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if they 'banned stupid' -- would have to ban self, as a class, the entire yacht set
lobbes: That is a great summation
mircea_popescu: hey, i see not the drawback.
asciilifeform: i can see a legit pov for the 'no sql' folx. 'you will NOT introduce programmerolade into our process flow, creating work for maggots like yerself and marrying our corp to your lazy and entitled arse' approx.
asciilifeform: when whole thing is excel -- the 60 y.o. buffett at the top, theoretically understands the flow.
asciilifeform: when you let ~one~ flunky write ~one~ perl script, on other hand..
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-10#1641504 << From experience, there's a definite slot for learning filled by sql. i personally show girls how to use a db for their own shit, which may be simply grocery lists ("now tell me how many kgs of pepper we bought by day last year"). truthg be told the path to a structured mind is long and arduous.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-10 18:29 phf: ok, i guess we both know what the problem is. my solution is "study db related algorithms until you know enough to write a db", your solution, unless i misunderstand, seems to be "use an existing database a lot". i don't understand how learning, say, postgresql will get you from not knowing anything about db internal design to writing your own
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform this naive view is mostly borne of not much using excel.
asciilifeform: this unfortunately is not so. did use.
asciilifeform: quite familiar with this particular wheelbarrow.
mircea_popescu: the attempt to understand another's excel pile is not unliuke trying to grok the intended functioning of the preferred emacs setup of a rabid squirrel.
asciilifeform: it's examinable, what.
asciilifeform: and yes, there is a turing-complete basic stuffed in there. but ~no one uses.
mircea_popescu: in my own (limited) experience, every time i found myself consulting for this lot i had them write, by hand, in narrative form, what they thought their excels did.
mircea_popescu: improved productivity 1500%
asciilifeform can picture this.
mircea_popescu: it's examinable in the sense xilinx is examinable.
asciilifeform: i'd guess that it happens most to folx who are ~wholly untethered to reality ( financial models, say, of elaborate scamola that sums to 0 at the end of the day, rather than , say, titrations )
asciilifeform: the excelolade of the people who asciilifeform worked with, who had to juggle physical objects every day, was reasonably sane.
mircea_popescu: i guess that may be explanatory.
asciilifeform: intelligent (in the glass bead sense) folx who are unbound from reality, tend to birth monsters.
mircea_popescu: before coming up with the "Write it down. By hand." i had an excel depacker, which cost me literal man-years to have made and tuned, and which was good but far from perfect.
asciilifeform: this sounds agonizing.
mircea_popescu: well... trade barriers rite.
mircea_popescu: (and no, it NEVER happened that two people in the same team using the same tools actually had compatible notions of what the tools did.)
asciilifeform: to revisit upstack : present-day asciilifeform does not agree with young-asciilifeform re 'excel is what poor illiterate folx who never learned Actual Programming, suffer with'. in an important sense it is superior to a good fraction of what passes for 'actual program'
mircea_popescu: it's just not clear that the particular sense is actually relevant in any public sense.
asciilifeform: specifically, the 'this produces no meaningful answer and i have nfi why' situation never happens.
asciilifeform: it is more or less impossible in a spreadshit.
mircea_popescu: and this goes right back ot the literacy vs hyeroglyphs thread, amusingly enough.
asciilifeform: at plenty of cost.
asciilifeform: my disagreement was in re 'this is an illusory/masturbatory pleasure, like cocaine'
asciilifeform: it is not necessarily so.
asciilifeform: asciilifeform's chemists would NOT have been well served by being sent to learn sql.
asciilifeform: or perl.
mircea_popescu: and my party girls would not have been well served by the soviet dress fashions for professional females cca 1965.
mircea_popescu: what's this prove.
mircea_popescu: also, i dunno how relevant but factual in any case : 90% of in-house it support requests from excel users is exactly, "i did thing and it did i dunno what or why halp!1"
mircea_popescu: which is ~how "from scratch for srs db" projects even end up engaged in by banks and their ilk. the it dept is pushing relentlessly for away-from-excel for this reason every single board meeting.
asciilifeform: 'it dept' of course wants full employment for perlists.
mircea_popescu: "we'll end up hiring two excel support people for every backofice gurl!!"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yes, they want to do things that don't involve talking to girls or ~~~horror of horrors~~~ being at their call.
asciilifeform: i can easily picture mircea_popescu's excelists tho. the thing does ~not~ behave gracefully at the outer limits of what it does.
asciilifeform: wouldn't be a microshit product if it did, now.
asciilifeform: but -- quite like the plastic scissors they issue to kindergarteners and asylum inmates, the thing ~does~ have a sweet spot in which it ~works.
asciilifeform: and in that sweet spot, beats the shit out of perl.
asciilifeform: not the least of reasons for this being that you don't need the deformed monkey any moar
asciilifeform: can deal in 'human' concepts, that make sense on grid paper just the same as on the comp.
mircea_popescu: possibly.
asciilifeform: consider, visicalc was hyperbestseller among 'people who do things'; while the bare micro, even with rom basic -- was not.
mircea_popescu: how much did it sell ? i'm not really familiar.
asciilifeform: this is even though the latter is quite superior, at least in raw capacity, speed, to the former.
mircea_popescu: got a number to save me from fishing through the memorabilia tripod ?
asciilifeform: 300 ( 1980 usd ) for the proggy
asciilifeform: pretty hefty
asciilifeform: and this dun include the comp
mircea_popescu: no i mean, how many copies or units or such
asciilifeform: 300k supposedly.
asciilifeform: and quickly.
asciilifeform: or hm nm
asciilifeform: that was the pc port
asciilifeform: initial release sold 700k (1mil total), claimed.
mircea_popescu: that's a lot!
asciilifeform: ( http://archive.is/d8V0S << another source claims 800k by may of '85 )
asciilifeform: 5y after release.
mircea_popescu: for the time it's quite hyper.
asciilifeform: '...A few dealers knew what they were doing and got their salespeople excited about it. Because of VisiCalc, one of the Burlington, Massachusetts, dealers became the most successful Apple dealer in the country at that time. Two of its salesmen ended up as two of the founders of Lotus (the original team that brought out 1-2-3). We only sold about 1000 a month for the first few months because we had
asciilifeform: to get the word out to the primary consumers, who were financial people. [Editor’s note: A total of over 800,000 copies were sold by May of 1985, when Lotus purchased Software Arts and ceased marketing VisiCalc]'
asciilifeform: bricklin became, at least until rise of microshit and its cargocults -- a cult figure
mircea_popescu: i can see why.
asciilifeform: was in fact one of the few folx who made genuine advances for the micro. whose cake microshit proceeded to swallow.
asciilifeform: this 800k (or 1mil, or whichever) is an amazing number, because it isn't a pile of britney records. these were ~people~ buying.
mircea_popescu: if pressed i wouldn't even have imagined there were 1mn people who doi things left in the 80s us.
mircea_popescu: puts in perspective what maga has to actually accomplish.
asciilifeform: 'VisiCalc ran on a 24K-byte machine, 32K bytes with disk. '
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i don't think su ever delivered 1mn of any kind of calculating machine, since we're on it.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: even the infamous 'felix' only sold 300k.
mircea_popescu: and that was possibly largest.
mircea_popescu: this has been a very informative discussion, i had nfi.
asciilifeform: actually the 300k figure seems to refer to just 1 year.
asciilifeform: likely moar existed -- thing was in production from end of '20s to early '80s !
mircea_popescu: afaik the total run was a few hundred k items.
asciilifeform: didja ever have one ?
mircea_popescu: had ro clone.
mircea_popescu: but 90s.
asciilifeform: there were many many clones.
mircea_popescu: certainly saw yugo clone as well
asciilifeform: original was german thing
asciilifeform: odhner.
asciilifeform: cranked arithmometers were spiffy, for their time, american 'manhattan' project ran on'em
asciilifeform: (gurls, cranked, scribbled)
mircea_popescu: certainly in the vein of the above excel ooda.
mircea_popescu: there's truly no way to make it do strange things.
mircea_popescu: babbage problem, of course, remains.
asciilifeform: aha. and if it jammed, the oil bottle is right-there.
asciilifeform: and - what's worst ? needs new gear?
mircea_popescu: first-cleanner. then-oil. then-light cig. then put out fire.
asciilifeform: 'babbage problem' is not escapable, it does not come from the poor machine, no. 'pebkac'.
mod6: MEGA
mod6: LOG
mircea_popescu: hola mod6
asciilifeform: ohai mod6
mod6: o7
shinohai: Hope you made popcorn mod6
mod6: i've been following along off and on all day.
asciilifeform reads 'o7', thinks 'brigadier general..?'
mod6: need to get the last few hours
mircea_popescu: it's how you do military salute if you're playing excel-in-space
mircea_popescu: which it occurs to me asciilifeform might enjoy ?
asciilifeform: lol, 3d spreadshit?
mircea_popescu: !~google eve online
jhvh1: mircea_popescu: EVE Online - One community. Countless journeys.: <https://www.eveonline.com/>; Eve Online - Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online>; EVE Online - YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwF3VyalTHzL0L-GDlwtbRw>
asciilifeform: aaah it
mircea_popescu: we even have / had a guild there
asciilifeform: i had it on my list, for what to do with that wintel box
mod6: 1BTC right?
mircea_popescu: i dunno how active it is or anything ; but we were pretty rich if memory serves.
mod6: :]
asciilifeform: last thing i played was, iirc, 'hearts of iron'. then lent the box to brother , in feb., and hadn't had time to touch it since
mircea_popescu: i dun know that one.
asciilifeform: ww2 micromanagement sim thing.
asciilifeform: (demo level: you start as mussolini)
asciilifeform: dunno if i recommend.
mod6: im about to try to load up this offline phys box with all the blocks.
mod6: wrote a perl one liner to cut them all apart with blkcut... now just gotta feed 'em in.
mircea_popescu: ah i dun like ww2 stuff.
mod6: ok there they go
mod6: 15k blocks and counting
mod6: -verifyall & -caneat
mod6: ~0ms writes
mod6: nmon is running
mod6: box is: 24 CPU / 64Gb RAM / 1Tb Kingston SSD
mod6: lol, disk is probably going to start on fire.
mod6: 40k blocks...
mircea_popescu: a yea good point : folks plox fan your ssds when doing mass blockeat experiments etc.
asciilifeform: i've yet to meet one that seriously warms
mod6: 50k
mod6: i've got mine in a std enclosure and it's got a faned bp. but... if she fries, well, she fries.
mod6: a good test either way.
asciilifeform: unless your environment is quite peculiar ( massively overheaded cage, or a satellite, or a pile of blankets?? ) typical ssd maxes out at 40c or so
asciilifeform: at room ambient temp
asciilifeform: *overheated
mircea_popescu: i had one i couldn't touch. hence keep ssds in fanned thing
mod6: this is pretty f'ing awesome, actually.
shinohai: I need a better SSD, these girls better step up their game.
mod6: shake it!
mod6: 93k
mod6: there's like 180k+ blocks in blk0001.dat
asciilifeform: mostly hollow aha
mod6: i cut apart 50 .dat files. noodle on that for a minute. and these dickweeds want BIGGER blocks.
mod6: asciilifeform: got that book from pong chu
shinohai: All except lukejr, but he's just a contradictory blockhead
mod6: thx for the heads up
asciilifeform: mod6: it's an ok b00k. there is not, afaik, a 'great' one
asciilifeform: again i'll reminds, hard part for n00bs is not 'verilog' but rather the basic idea of 'program where all lines execute at once'
asciilifeform: especially given as it is not quite so, and various sections have 'triggers' (particular signals that cause them to 'happen')
asciilifeform: i recommend to study very carefully the diagrams that give examples of what gates particular snippets actually get synthed into, and why
asciilifeform: (e.g., what is an inferred latch, and why do you virtually never want one.)
mod6: there's an example in here of a FIFO circular queue in verilog, neat.
asciilifeform: best to think of it as 'in iron', rather than 'in verilog', other ways to specify the same circuit, get you same result.
mod6: werd
asciilifeform: mod6: build yourself a copy of 'verilator'
asciilifeform: worx ok
asciilifeform: and will give you a little ability to debug (i hesitate to use the word)
asciilifeform: a good chunk of the pain in this kind of work is the ~total lack of anything like the customary debugger. ( that, and the constraints of the medium - the very palpable differences between fpga and actual asic, but even in the latter there are physical delays )
mircea_popescu: in other news, i deem http://trilema.com/2017/the-lordship-list-fourth-year/ a done deal ; trinque plox to update deedbot to reflect.
mod6: mircea_popescu: cool
mod6: asciilifeform: ah, ok.
mod6: i was thinking about taking my xilinx board and seeing if I can throw your fg-genesis on there.
asciilifeform: mod6: you could, but be mindful of the crystal
mod6: yeah, not sure if this one is ok...
mod6 looks
asciilifeform: mod6: if you want to talk to a ttl-usb serial dongle, you gotta match one of the classical baud rates, or you get rubbish (and not the desired rubbish, either, but patterned rubbish -- or nothing at all)
mod6: i did get that xilinx platform cable usb deal in the mail too.
asciilifeform: you may recognize the idiom -- it's a divisor by 128.
mod6: 86 +// div128, for UART's 115200b on 14.7456MHz crystal.
mod6: ah
asciilifeform: if your dev board crystal is a power-of-2 multiple of your baud rate -- you're ok, just gotta change the divisor
asciilifeform: if not -- problem.
mod6: gotcha
asciilifeform: ( there is unfortunately no such thing as a serial port that eats arbitrary baud rates. )
mod6: the chip i've got is a 'xilinx spartan XC3S500E'
mod6: looking forward to getting into this stuff a bit.
mod6: for edu purposes, etc.
mod6: when i start actually doing somethings, i'll take some pics.
mod6: i'd like to audit one of these fgs soon too.
mod6: might give that a try tomorrow
mircea_popescu: good blog material in any case.
mod6: ya
mod6: i may write up something on my website, or send something to qntra
mod6: speaking of which, my mom asked about BingoBoingo
mod6: she's been mainly 100% delirious. but in a moment of slurred-opiate semi-clarity, she asked me "hows BingoBoingo?"
mod6: ^ my reaction exactly.
mircea_popescu: opiates suck.
mod6: yeah, she's in hospice now. they're keeping her pretty comfortable.
mod6: she was semi-lucid until friday. but been pretty much not-eating & sleeping all day since.
mircea_popescu: there is that.
mod6: well, she was sleeping all day on saturday. then for a moment, she woke up, got pissed off, tried to get out of bed, fell down. then wrestled two nurses, and sucker punched one in the face.
mod6: felt so bad for the young lady. it wasn't a hard punch or anything... but still. lol.
mod6: wtf.
mod6: they came over and gave her a pretty big dose of valium<sp> or whatever.
mod6: then it was back to night-night.
mod6: i think the bed alarm threw her into a rage. the thing started going off like a UPS alarm.
mod6: it was quite something to behold. here's a lady, clinging to breath, hardly moves, then gets up and fights to young women.
mircea_popescu: zee human body.
mod6: its something else 'eh
mod6: danielpbarron: hey, did you ever figure out whatever with your openbsd deed you were trying to do?
mod6: TomServo: any update on the issues you ran into?
TomServo: mod6: Sorry, nothing to report as yet. Node is still running, wedged, and untouched. Haven't had time to delve any deeper.
mod6: Ok, thanks for the update.
mod6: ben_vulpes: so if i have a `std::map<ktype, std::vector<vtype>> stuffMap`, is it legal to say `stuffMap[k].push_back(newV)` << should be fine as long as newV is of vtype.
shinohai: https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/16300 <<< omg it's Ryan X Charles' wet dream
mod6: pull my finger
mod6: 150k
mod6: no fires yet
shinohai: If the shitty, 4 year old hardware I run my node hasn't burnt down the house yet I'm highly optimistic for you mod6 :D
mod6: :]
shinohai just likes shitty old computers ...
shinohai: I'm still hopeful I'll find something that'll run on that Dell I salvaged a few weeks ago.
danielpbarron: mod6, i think trinque is working on it
mod6: ah, ok. werd.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> ben_vulpes: i always wished there were such a thing as an ac with a throttle << Not throttle, needs adjustable clutch
asciilifeform: the starting/stopping of the compressor and the blower is also massive waste of energy.
asciilifeform: why not continuously variable heat pumping ?
asciilifeform: compress as-needed, blow -- as-needed.
asciilifeform: as determined by the actual leakage of the room walls.
asciilifeform: ( if all ac used peltier junction, this would be quite trivial. unfortunately peltier is not actually +ev in comparison with mechanical compressor. )
asciilifeform: you can't even ~get~ a peltier in anything like the size you would want for a room ac. would need hundred of'em.
asciilifeform: ( and car-sized radiator for hot end. )
asciilifeform: not car-radiator size. car-size.
asciilifeform: is there such a thing as a variable-ratio compressor ?
asciilifeform: seems as if -- there could easily be.
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> cocaine is the eminent example. it FEELS like it does things to you. it does not therefore HELP. << The problems with cocaine hcl powder is that in little time even that feeling goes that and you are left with only feeling of wanting moar cocaine
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> i am not proposing an alternative for that function. doctor isn't in the line of proposing replacement for cocaine, and from the "i wanna feel good" perspective the whole pharmacopoea is a waste of space. << This is why CIA popularized freebase salt of cocaine
asciilifeform: if people dosed aspirin the way they dosed cocaine, they would decide that it, too, is useless.
asciilifeform: nobody ~forces~ idiot to snort it.
asciilifeform: the spanish first denied the indians they were working to death, their coca, then permitted again. this suggests that coca -- works.
asciilifeform: for that particular value of worx.
asciilifeform: ( pretty sure we had this thread. )
asciilifeform: ( some modern folx -- gabriel_laddel ?? -- continue this fine tradition even today... )
BingoBoingo: <mod6> she's been mainly 100% delirious. but in a moment of slurred-opiate semi-clarity, she asked me "hows BingoBoingo?" << I am doing well, celebrate 18 months of continuous sobriety later this month.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> compress as-needed, blow -- as-needed. << Thinking on it, AC may be the one application where CVT transmission makes sense
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> seems as if -- there could easily be. << Probably low hanging fruit
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform soviets similarily denied afghani whatever, then permitted again. this suggests - empire doesn't honestly gas.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> for that particular value of worx. << The second best treatment for addiction disorders is drugs of abuse
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: iirc ww2 germany experimented with similarly cocainizing prisoners, for endurance, but came to 0, war ended
trinque: this is the kind of thing of which you're disabused after you reach your personal tolerance of bros telling you their great business idea
trinque: might give you the will to march, but all directions seem equally great ideas
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