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Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)
  • I mean, I guess you could just programmatically insert a > after every command. That's actually a pretty good idea. It's kind of obvious now that you mention it, haha!

    It would be better if the tools expected to be used this way, but as a quick kludge for a project about something else it's probably sufficient.

  • Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)
  • Probably Rust, although I'm not married to it. I'm just at the planning stage right now, though.

    One open question is if you can use a fairly standard transceiver like a Bluetooth chip, or if you need an SDR. Obviously they weren't designed with this in mind, by maybe there's a profile that's close enough.

    Packets should have a few kilobytes of payload so you can fit a postquantum cryptographic artifact. Thankfully, even with a BCH code, it seems doable to fit that much in a 1-second burst in a standard amateur radio voice channel, for testing. (In actual clandestine use I'd expect you'd want to go as wide as the hardware can support)

    As envisioned there would be someone operating a hub, which might have actual network access through some means, and on which the containers run. They would send out runners to collect traffic from busy public spaces which might serve as hubs for burst activity, and dump outgoing packets, all without giving up any locations.

    Accounts with their own small container would be opened by sending in a public key, and then further communication would be by standard symmetric algorithm - except in testing, because that's an amateur radio no-no, so just signed cleartext. ID would be derived from signature fingerprint, as I have been thinking about it. I have a lightweight hash scheme in mind that would allow awarding of credit for retransmitting packets in a way that couldn't be cheated.

    You'd want to have some ability to detect and move around jamming, or just other people's bursts. That's more hardware research, basically.

  • Junior dev VS FAANMG dev
  • You can do all those things while also not supporting FAANG

    Depends. If you can find another employer that's more ethical (which is not guaranteed just because they're smaller) and pays as much with as flexible a work schedule, yeah, you should probably do that. Otherwise it might indeed be necessary.

    I don't know, are we doing concequentialist ethics here, or deontological? I feel like we've reached the level of splitting hairs where we need to decide. For the purpose of actual advice people reading might follow, I'd say just try and be a good person, and don't let perfect be the enemy of better.

  • Junior dev VS FAANMG dev
  • I mean, a lot of companies do stuff like that, and yet you still need money to live. Just working there doesn't necessarily make it your fault; by that logic it would be a sin to work checkout at Walmart, because you'll have the same blood on your hands as the Waltons.

    I don't really like talking about capitalism as if it's a well defined concept, but, no ethical consumption under.

    I’m not ignoring the other two things listed, I’m realistic.

    I didn't mean you, FYI. I mean someone who does work for a FAANG and is looking for more justification to do nothing for the common good.

  • Junior dev VS FAANMG dev
  • Why not? Unlike Schindler you don't have to worry about how many beatings are necessary to keep up appearances, and you might have a specific role that exposes you to very little evil at all. Meanwhile, you can donate some of that big wage to people like EFF, or volunteer using the flexible schedule.

  • Junior dev VS FAANMG dev
  • I was kind of assuming that, since FAANG are American, but I'd guess they probably have foreign employees as well.

    Canadians make pretty much the same as Europeans, I think. The Americans have a bunch of monopolies, and are characteristically weird and nationalist about who they share the spoils with. (I know, it's not all of you guys, but it's definitely some)

  • Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)
  • Government agencies, in my experience, tend to believe in security through obscurity; even the ones that don't worry about spies as much as NASA. That said, maybe it's worth a shot. I'll have to figure out who's the best person to bug.

  • Junior dev VS FAANMG dev
  • Yeah, I do worry someone will read the "work for a FAANG" part, and ignore the other two things listed. It's absolutely not enough to go "welp, I'm just a little cog following orders".

    Maybe a one-man boycott is the wrong way to put it. Multi-person boycotts are obviously built from individual people. I guess my real point is that there's not a one-size-fits-all solution; you actually have to look at the world, look at how you want it to be, and figure out how you can help make that happen from your place in it.

  • Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)
  • Yeah, I want not real time. The goal of having containers in the first place is to enable as much as possible without needing to put a human in the loop, since you have no idea how long each packet will spend in transit.

    If I could emulate Curiosity's onboard computer that would be a decent starting point.

  • Please stop
  • YEARS OF BACKPORTS yet NO REAL WORLD USE FOUND for staying more than ONE VERSION behind

    I have a really old computer that still gets the job done, and just getting up to Bullseye broke it a bit.

    I know, I know, it's just a meme.

  • Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)

    I've been playing with an idea that would involve running a machine over a delay-tolerant mesh network. The thing is, each packet is precious and needs to be pretty much self contained in that situation, while modern systems assume SSH-like continuous interaction with the user.

    Has anyone heard of anything pre-existing that would work here? I figured if anyone would know about situations where each character is expensive, it would be you folks.

    23
    What's the chance the "traitor MPs" the news is going on about are literally just Han Dong?

    We have no idea how many there are, and we already know about one, right? It seems like the simplest possibility.

    2
    The most recent XKCD, which is the best periodic table ever made

    This is about exactly how I remember it, although the lanthanides and actinides got shortchanged.

    4
    www.quantamagazine.org Physicists Finally Find a Problem Only Quantum Computers Can Do | Quanta Magazine

    Researchers have shown that a problem about the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones.

    Physicists Finally Find a Problem Only Quantum Computers Can Do | Quanta Magazine

    Unfortunately not the best headline. No, quantum supremacy has not been proven, exactly. What this is is another kind of candidate problem, but one that's universal, in the sense that a classical algorithm for it could be used to solve all other BQP problems (so BQP=P). That would include Shor's algorithm, and would make Q-day figuratively yesterday, so let's hope this is an actual example.

    Weirdly enough, they kind of skip that detail in the body of the article. Maybe they're planning to do one of their deep dives on it. Still, this is big news.

    1
    What's the issue, specifically, with Lemmit federation?

    Example: On here vs. on Lemmit itself.

    I don't know if this is our end or theirs, but nobody seems to have commented about it on their meta community, which makes me think it's not broken for users on bigger instances.

    4
    arstechnica.com Fans preserve and emulate Sega’s extremely rare ‘80s “AI computer”

    Prolog-based Japanese education hardware sported an early touch-panel, speech synthesizer.

    Fans preserve and emulate Sega’s extremely rare ‘80s “AI computer”
    4
    What are your opinions of Guix?

    Reposting because it looks like federation failed.

    > I was just reading about it, it sounds like a pretty cool OS and package manager. Has anyone actually used it?

    60
    www.nature.com Opinion: Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning - Nature Reviews Chemistry

    Recent developments in systems chemistry have shown how the molecular building blocks of life could have arisen from plausible prebiotic feedstocks. This Perspective argues that we remain a long way from a full picture and speculates on what pieces of the puzzle are still missing.

    Opinion: Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning - Nature Reviews Chemistry

    Great info if you're interested in the state of the art on how abiogenesis might work.

    I also didn't realise LUCA was so sophisticated already until I read this. The story it tells is that very basic life was already widespread in the Hadean era, and when the late heavy bombardment hit and the Earth was resurfaced, only life around a hydrothermal vent (or vents) survived, with one long-term survivor going on to become the sole ancestor of modern life.

    (If you don't have institutional credentials, there is a pirate website by the name of "sci-hub", with the dash. No endorsement but it's not like you were ever going to pay 40 bucks to read this)

    0
    An old-ish analysis of the posterior probability of abiogenesis

    It's not really news after a decade, but I still think it's worth a look. This is something I think about sometimes, and it's better to let the actual scholars speak.

    For whatever reason it's not mentioned as a candidate great filter very often even though nearly all the later steps on the path to complexity have happened more than once, and there's lots of habitable looking exoplanets.

    Edit: To be clear, this says that just because life started early on Earth, doesn't really provide much evidence it's an easy process, if you allow that it could possibly be very unlikely indeed.

    4
    Lemmy Support @lemmy.ml CanadaPlus @lemmy.sdf.org
    Was I temp banned for anti-Zionism?

    The mod log.

    I can't see what other issues there could possibly be with this. It wasn't even spicy as anti-Zionism goes, and all the factual content was accurate.

    I can see how the comment from months ago could be seen as insensitive, although my intention was more to point out the inherent racism in the opposite position. That's not the one that did it, though.

    0
    A worried Washington prods Israel to define its military objectives - CBC

    An interesting look at how America thinks about the conflict when cameras aren't pointing at them. TL;DR they see themselves 20 years ago, and are trying to figure out how to convey all the lessons that experience taught them, including "branches" and "sequels", which is jargon I haven't heard mentioned before. Israel is not terribly receptive.

    Aaand of course, Tom Cotton is at the end basically describing a genocide, which he would support.

    3
    How would I make my own bubble memory?

    It's a good candidate since it sounds like there's no precision mechanical components like there would be in a hard drive. Does anyone have ideas for how I'd go about this? Is there a barrier I'm not considering?

    I know how to make basic semiconductors already, so that's not an issue.

    Edit: I've got an answer written down in the comments now. TL;DR you'd still need lithography to do it the OG way, because of the patterned magnetic material that directed bubbles around the medium, but material requirements are actually pretty flexible.

    15
    What's a good source to learn to use Matter?

    Most of the stuff I can find either is a general news story or reads like advertising copy.

    0
    A test of artificial intelligence - Nature
    www.nature.com A test of artificial intelligence

    As debate rages over the abilities of modern AI systems, scientists are still struggling to effectively assess machine intelligence.

    A test of artificial intelligence
    0

    I feel like this explains a lot more of how I think about the the geography of the world today than any other map I've seen recently. This is why Australia seems strange and distant while China is familiar, despite the much higher language and culture affinity I have with post-colonial Australia.

    2
    [META] What are the demographics of this community?

    Am I the only Zoomer? I see a lot of "I remember"-type responses, so I have to wonder.

    85
    RAND on the benefits and limitations of the F-16 for Ukraine
    www.rand.org What F-16s Will (and Won't) Do for Ukraine

    After months of publicly lobbying to acquire U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, it appears that Ukraine may receive them later this year. However, there remains a long road ahead before the F-16s would see service in Ukraine—and it is an open question how much they would affect the outcome of the war.

    What F-16s Will (and Won't) Do for Ukraine

    A few months old now, but it was news to me. Basically, the F-16 will allow Ukraine to keep doing the same thing they are now, but are just as limited for the purpose of providing support on the front lines.

    If Ukraine doesn't manage to breach Russian fortifications in this offensive, the West will have to find a different way of giving them an edge, if we want to avoid a war of pure attrition.

    2