Day changed to 2024-11-04
[03:16] jfw: dorion: finalizing the gbw-signer vpatch, testing on v.pl silently fails yet again. it happened for gscm too, but I figured out it was because I'd missed the project subdirectory (gscm never having previously used such, I guess I'd been manually putting it in each time for the prior maintenance patches). thus, patch missing antecedent. so far no clue on this one though.
[03:17] jfw: it applies fine manually, can try it as a fetch-bitcoind update since that also checks sigs & hashes.
[13:22] dorion: jfw, alright. sux about v.pl and sounds good wrt fetch-bitcoind. this adds more weight to moving to vamp, wouldn't you say ?
[14:42] jfw: moving to vamp is a weight that still needs more lifting, while staying without it is a weight that continues dragging, I'd say.
Day changed to 2024-11-06
[15:10] jfw: so, the press reports a projected Trumpreich 2.0, with Trump claiming victory and politburo-appointed runner-up Kamelface Whatshername apparently hiding in a closet declining to comment.
[15:20] jfw: the former Paypal competitor X.com, now housing Elon Musk's allegedly pro-free-speech micro-blogging platform, reports merely "This browser is no longer supported." When asked for clarification, they explained that users of non-whitelisted browsers, such as any who haven't swallowed all of SillyCon Valley's latest booster updates, "may be unable to use X". Left unstated is that this disability is
[15:20] jfw: of their own creation.
[15:20] jfw: * of X's own creation.
[18:00] jfw: btc-usd markets seem to like the news, up around 6% over 24h.
[18:01] dorion: apparently the republicans now control the executive, house, senate and already controlled the supreme court. they grabbed that election by the pussy.
[18:01] dorion: usdbtc down 6%
[21:12] jfw: the house seems uncertain yet.
[21:12] jfw: think the election liked it?
[23:16] dorion: non one asked.
Day changed to 2024-11-07
[09:48] lru: jfw: is the browser check based on the headers sent, or something more complex like javascript code running in the browser? if just headers, send what it expects?
[09:51] lru: I'm sure X will happily take the "blame" for this disability too, because they likely test against the whitelist, instead of against one particular web standard
[17:08] jfw: it's probably both. they're welcome to send someone here to work with me on it, I can donate some testing & feedback; otherwise, I have better things to do than reverse engineering the braindamage du jour.
[20:33] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/in-accidental-social-engineering-yesterday/
Day changed to 2024-11-09
[18:33] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Oct-2024/#12504 - this guy's up to 374700.
[18:33] sourcerer: 2024-10-18 03:40:27 (#jwrd) jfw: I've now got its busybox rebuilt for the tar fix, rngnet feeding /dev/urandom, bitcoind built and a sync kicked off.
[18:37] jfw: we had an 11-hour power outage at the "datacenter"; everything seems recovered fine now, though looks like the restoration was "noisy", the server got stuck in a powered off state and needed a kick to come back up. not the most auspicious start, but it's the infrastructure we afford so far and such outage should be unusual.
[18:41] jfw: it sounded like a quite localised event, like a transformer failed right on the street by the building.
Day changed to 2024-11-10
[20:47] jfw: Running behind schedule again on publishing the latest Scheme work; going through the pre-signing review of the last and heaviest of six patches, and already turned up one small thing worth fixing in it.
[20:54] jfw: Still not enjoying this part as much as the new coding... but, if the work is important, then the problem must be in the enjoyer.
Day changed to 2024-11-11
[12:06] lru: how do you know if work is important?
[12:06] lru: is it possible to live on crypto only, without fiat, in north america yet?
[12:07] lru: my two questions for the day
[14:51] dorion: lru, btc -> local cash otc is likely to continue to be the norm, because btc isn't made for retail, nor do I want to be carrying keys everywhere.
[14:52] dorion: lru, where abouts are you ?
[14:54] dorion: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12540 -- the upside is the more intense review caused you to find something worth fixing prior to publishing.
[14:54] sourcerer: 2024-11-10 20:54:57 (#jwrd) jfw: Still not enjoying this part as much as the new coding... but, if the work is important, then the problem must be in the enjoyer.
[14:59] dorion: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12541 -- the best heuristic for 'knowing' is if a client who shares your values is willing to pay for it at an acceptable price. absent that, you're working more on a basis of belief that the work will help you find those clients or , once found, convince them to use the output.
[14:59] sourcerer: 2024-11-11 12:06:06 (#jwrd) lru: how do you know if work is important?
[15:33] jfw: what dorion said and perhaps more generally: because the work solves a problem that exists either now or in the future. where the experience and art of management come in, then, is figuring out what's really a problem and what's likely to be needed in the future, at least with enough odds to justify the cost in the present, weighed against all the other things that might be needed.
[15:38] jfw: and tackling things at the right time, before they become crises.
[15:43] jfw: which would suggest that the better things are going, the more important becomes internal motivation or discipline because you're doing things that only pay off in the future if at all.
[20:59] lru: thank you both for your thoughtful answers
[21:01] lru: dorion: I'm in Canada... and after posting my question, searched for crypto/bitcoiny ways to pay for things... found some... one idea being to use a credit card and then pay it off with bitcoin
[21:02] lru: I don't know who I would go to for an in-person btc->cash transaction
[21:46] dorion: lru, you have a credit card that accepts btc ? i know some canadians that use wences' xapo card. I think there used to be more otc options in canada, a couple contacts here operated in vancouver and montreal, but increased kyc demands caused them to shut down.
[21:47] dorion: is your plan to stay in canada ? there are lots of canucks in panama, actually.
[22:47] lru: yeah, I plan to stay in Canada... I don't have a credit card that accept btc now, but it appeared to be an option, or at least an option to do btc to bank payments, leaving a credit card as one of the things you can pay ff
[22:47] lru: off*
[22:49] dorion: what do you like about Canada ?
[22:50] lru: other than I was born here, and have family, I like how little land is actually in use, leaving a lot of it wild and basically unused
[22:51] dorion: are you an outdoorsman then ?
[22:52] lru: not as much as I would like :-) but the fact the option is there is appealing
[22:52] dorion: i know a canadian here who ran a trapline in northern bc for a year during his 20s. some interesting stories and he tells them well.
[22:52] dorion: ever hunted w/ success ?
[22:53] lru: no, sadly
[22:54] dorion: deer season is upon us. but maybe better wait for next year. hunter safety is important.
[22:54] dorion: and noteably, killing the thing is sometimes the easier part. gutting it and getting it back to civilization can be messier.
[22:56] lru: depending what you shoot, and where, it can be a multi-person job to get it all back
[22:57] dorion: that's what I mean. both deer I shot were carted out on atv. no dragging necessary. lucky me.
[22:58] lru: indeed
[22:59] dorion: lru, did you get ahold of a 1tb drive yet for your btc node ?
[23:01] lru: I don't recall saying I was going to, but no.... I was almost stunned and very happy to know that a 1tb drive would be enough
[23:01] lru: quick price check on disks...
[23:03] lru: $116 for crucial ssd... is that good?
[23:19] dorion: we always use samsung.
[23:19] jfw: looks like http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-May-2024/#11120 was the last talk on SSDs. I'm not familiar with Crucial's myself; at least that brand goes back a ways in DRAM
[23:19] sourcerer: 2024-05-08 18:07:19 (#jwrd) jfw: cruciform asked about SSD recommendations; for the Thinkpads we've pretty much been sticking with Samsung EVO, following the TMSR gossip - which AFAIK was indeed just gossip, no data.
[23:20] dorion: lru, i was referring to http://jfxpt.com/2024/blockchain-kindergarten-why-proof-of-work/?b=the%20largest&e=500G#select
[23:30] lru: $129-ish for samsung
[23:31] lru: dorion: yes, and that is still the case :-) used one of them up recently as a system backup while I did an in-place Debian upgrade to Bookworm
[23:32] lru: when I deem the upgrade a success, I can free it up again
[23:33] lru: nice having a small pile of disks all the same size
Day changed to 2024-11-13
[02:08] jfw: yesterday I hit some perplexing curiosities in the depths of the Scheme macro semantics. Unearthed an old test case that still failed, and discovered that another I thought working only appeared so because I'd botched the test code. Both look rather difficult to fix and yet rather obscure and inconsequential. So today I've at least clarified the situation in mind and in comments; it might just
[02:08] jfw: have to be a "bugs declared features" kinda thing. Planning to do a mini-writeup, at least get some juice from it.
[02:12] jfw: the look into test cases was prompted by a dubious spot in the implementation on the readthrough, i.e. it's turned up by a systematic process, not just throwing darts and seeing what hits.
[02:16] jfw: ("penetrate and patch" in other words)
[02:18] jfw: since high assurance is kinda the whole point of having our own interpreter, it gets the fine-toothed-comb treatment.
Day changed to 2024-11-14
[02:23] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/a-perplexing-curiosity-from-the-depths-of-scheme-definitions/ - that's one of the two curiosities out.
Day changed to 2024-11-15
[03:37] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12535 - up to 388000 blocks. it's doing typically 2-6 blocks per minute, with the occasional long period of nothing as per the known weakness of the sync code.
[03:37] sourcerer: 2024-11-09 18:33:20 (#jwrd) jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Oct-2024/#12504 - this guy's up to 374700.
[03:42] jfw: courtesy of whaack's explorer I'm seeing that the blocks in that range are mostly toward the full side, though sometimes much smaller. I expect it's likely to slow down a bit more in a logarithmic kinda way just due to the increasing size of the data set, but overall seems a perfectly respectable rate for keeping up once it's synced, and even for the sync itself as long as there's no rush
[03:50] jfw: though another point is that this is with a luxurious 30GB RAM soaked up in page cache.
[03:51] jfw: so if the box is carved up for other uses, the node won't have all that to itself.
[03:52] jfw: what do you make of the data points so far, dorion? we last discussed in the back room, "testing btc node performance on hdd was one thing to do with the new box"
[03:53] jfw: latest from the ISP is I got their invoicing process unclogged (some front office drone typo'd an email address on the handoff) and they've successfully received their first payment from us, so that closes the loop.
[03:54] jfw: cash deposit at the bank worked, no further accounts/dox necessary.
[03:59] jfw: extrapolating 4 bpm gives 84 days to finish the current sync
[04:32] jfw: the limitation we still have on booting is that lilo can't install to a RAID1 over 2 TB. an upgrade option with minimal time and materials cost, then, is to keep the existing 600G RAID1 for a boot volume plus whatever application group might want its own "dedicated spindle"; then buy two max-size HDDs for a second RAID1 data volume.
[04:36] jfw: or, go hybrid and use one or two SSDs for that 'boot' volume and put the node there
[04:41] jfw: or, go with some small/cheap device for the boot volume, ssd perhaps for less power draw, and just the 2 new HDDs for data, which leaves room for a warm spare.
[04:41] jfw: possibly there'd be room for that even with the 2-SSD RAID.
[04:42] jfw: I'm not that attached to the 'warm spare' though.
[04:52] jfw: the beauty of option 1 is we could open for business right now, add the new HDDs at our convenience, and not have to migrate anything. options 2 and 3 will both take my time to set up the new boot volume, and option 2 entails the most outlay on SSDs.
[05:00] jfw: an option 4 is to fuck around with the software to deal with that limitation, which has long term value but seems to be what we have the least bandwidth to handle right now.
[03:16] jfw: dorion: finalizing the gbw-signer vpatch, testing on v.pl silently fails yet again. it happened for gscm too, but I figured out it was because I'd missed the project subdirectory (gscm never having previously used such, I guess I'd been manually putting it in each time for the prior maintenance patches). thus, patch missing antecedent. so far no clue on this one though.
[03:17] jfw: it applies fine manually, can try it as a fetch-bitcoind update since that also checks sigs & hashes.
[13:22] dorion: jfw, alright. sux about v.pl and sounds good wrt fetch-bitcoind. this adds more weight to moving to vamp, wouldn't you say ?
[14:42] jfw: moving to vamp is a weight that still needs more lifting, while staying without it is a weight that continues dragging, I'd say.
Day changed to 2024-11-06
[15:10] jfw: so, the press reports a projected Trumpreich 2.0, with Trump claiming victory and politburo-appointed runner-up Kamelface Whatshername apparently hiding in a closet declining to comment.
[15:20] jfw: the former Paypal competitor X.com, now housing Elon Musk's allegedly pro-free-speech micro-blogging platform, reports merely "This browser is no longer supported." When asked for clarification, they explained that users of non-whitelisted browsers, such as any who haven't swallowed all of SillyCon Valley's latest booster updates, "may be unable to use X". Left unstated is that this disability is
[15:20] jfw: of their own creation.
[15:20] jfw: * of X's own creation.
[18:00] jfw: btc-usd markets seem to like the news, up around 6% over 24h.
[18:01] dorion: apparently the republicans now control the executive, house, senate and already controlled the supreme court. they grabbed that election by the pussy.
[18:01] dorion: usdbtc down 6%
[21:12] jfw: the house seems uncertain yet.
[21:12] jfw: think the election liked it?
[23:16] dorion: non one asked.
Day changed to 2024-11-07
[09:48] lru: jfw: is the browser check based on the headers sent, or something more complex like javascript code running in the browser? if just headers, send what it expects?
[09:51] lru: I'm sure X will happily take the "blame" for this disability too, because they likely test against the whitelist, instead of against one particular web standard
[17:08] jfw: it's probably both. they're welcome to send someone here to work with me on it, I can donate some testing & feedback; otherwise, I have better things to do than reverse engineering the braindamage du jour.
[20:33] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/in-accidental-social-engineering-yesterday/
Day changed to 2024-11-09
[18:33] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Oct-2024/#12504 - this guy's up to 374700.
[18:33] sourcerer: 2024-10-18 03:40:27 (#jwrd) jfw: I've now got its busybox rebuilt for the tar fix, rngnet feeding /dev/urandom, bitcoind built and a sync kicked off.
[18:37] jfw: we had an 11-hour power outage at the "datacenter"; everything seems recovered fine now, though looks like the restoration was "noisy", the server got stuck in a powered off state and needed a kick to come back up. not the most auspicious start, but it's the infrastructure we afford so far and such outage should be unusual.
[18:41] jfw: it sounded like a quite localised event, like a transformer failed right on the street by the building.
Day changed to 2024-11-10
[20:47] jfw: Running behind schedule again on publishing the latest Scheme work; going through the pre-signing review of the last and heaviest of six patches, and already turned up one small thing worth fixing in it.
[20:54] jfw: Still not enjoying this part as much as the new coding... but, if the work is important, then the problem must be in the enjoyer.
Day changed to 2024-11-11
[12:06] lru: how do you know if work is important?
[12:06] lru: is it possible to live on crypto only, without fiat, in north america yet?
[12:07] lru: my two questions for the day
[14:51] dorion: lru, btc -> local cash otc is likely to continue to be the norm, because btc isn't made for retail, nor do I want to be carrying keys everywhere.
[14:52] dorion: lru, where abouts are you ?
[14:54] dorion: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12540 -- the upside is the more intense review caused you to find something worth fixing prior to publishing.
[14:54] sourcerer: 2024-11-10 20:54:57 (#jwrd) jfw: Still not enjoying this part as much as the new coding... but, if the work is important, then the problem must be in the enjoyer.
[14:59] dorion: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12541 -- the best heuristic for 'knowing' is if a client who shares your values is willing to pay for it at an acceptable price. absent that, you're working more on a basis of belief that the work will help you find those clients or , once found, convince them to use the output.
[14:59] sourcerer: 2024-11-11 12:06:06 (#jwrd) lru: how do you know if work is important?
[15:33] jfw: what dorion said and perhaps more generally: because the work solves a problem that exists either now or in the future. where the experience and art of management come in, then, is figuring out what's really a problem and what's likely to be needed in the future, at least with enough odds to justify the cost in the present, weighed against all the other things that might be needed.
[15:38] jfw: and tackling things at the right time, before they become crises.
[15:43] jfw: which would suggest that the better things are going, the more important becomes internal motivation or discipline because you're doing things that only pay off in the future if at all.
[20:59] lru: thank you both for your thoughtful answers
[21:01] lru: dorion: I'm in Canada... and after posting my question, searched for crypto/bitcoiny ways to pay for things... found some... one idea being to use a credit card and then pay it off with bitcoin
[21:02] lru: I don't know who I would go to for an in-person btc->cash transaction
[21:46] dorion: lru, you have a credit card that accepts btc ? i know some canadians that use wences' xapo card. I think there used to be more otc options in canada, a couple contacts here operated in vancouver and montreal, but increased kyc demands caused them to shut down.
[21:47] dorion: is your plan to stay in canada ? there are lots of canucks in panama, actually.
[22:47] lru: yeah, I plan to stay in Canada... I don't have a credit card that accept btc now, but it appeared to be an option, or at least an option to do btc to bank payments, leaving a credit card as one of the things you can pay ff
[22:47] lru: off*
[22:49] dorion: what do you like about Canada ?
[22:50] lru: other than I was born here, and have family, I like how little land is actually in use, leaving a lot of it wild and basically unused
[22:51] dorion: are you an outdoorsman then ?
[22:52] lru: not as much as I would like :-) but the fact the option is there is appealing
[22:52] dorion: i know a canadian here who ran a trapline in northern bc for a year during his 20s. some interesting stories and he tells them well.
[22:52] dorion: ever hunted w/ success ?
[22:53] lru: no, sadly
[22:54] dorion: deer season is upon us. but maybe better wait for next year. hunter safety is important.
[22:54] dorion: and noteably, killing the thing is sometimes the easier part. gutting it and getting it back to civilization can be messier.
[22:56] lru: depending what you shoot, and where, it can be a multi-person job to get it all back
[22:57] dorion: that's what I mean. both deer I shot were carted out on atv. no dragging necessary. lucky me.
[22:58] lru: indeed
[22:59] dorion: lru, did you get ahold of a 1tb drive yet for your btc node ?
[23:01] lru: I don't recall saying I was going to, but no.... I was almost stunned and very happy to know that a 1tb drive would be enough
[23:01] lru: quick price check on disks...
[23:03] lru: $116 for crucial ssd... is that good?
[23:19] dorion: we always use samsung.
[23:19] jfw: looks like http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-May-2024/#11120 was the last talk on SSDs. I'm not familiar with Crucial's myself; at least that brand goes back a ways in DRAM
[23:19] sourcerer: 2024-05-08 18:07:19 (#jwrd) jfw: cruciform asked about SSD recommendations; for the Thinkpads we've pretty much been sticking with Samsung EVO, following the TMSR gossip - which AFAIK was indeed just gossip, no data.
[23:20] dorion: lru, i was referring to http://jfxpt.com/2024/blockchain-kindergarten-why-proof-of-work/?b=the%20largest&e=500G#select
[23:30] lru: $129-ish for samsung
[23:31] lru: dorion: yes, and that is still the case :-) used one of them up recently as a system backup while I did an in-place Debian upgrade to Bookworm
[23:32] lru: when I deem the upgrade a success, I can free it up again
[23:33] lru: nice having a small pile of disks all the same size
Day changed to 2024-11-13
[02:08] jfw: yesterday I hit some perplexing curiosities in the depths of the Scheme macro semantics. Unearthed an old test case that still failed, and discovered that another I thought working only appeared so because I'd botched the test code. Both look rather difficult to fix and yet rather obscure and inconsequential. So today I've at least clarified the situation in mind and in comments; it might just
[02:08] jfw: have to be a "bugs declared features" kinda thing. Planning to do a mini-writeup, at least get some juice from it.
[02:12] jfw: the look into test cases was prompted by a dubious spot in the implementation on the readthrough, i.e. it's turned up by a systematic process, not just throwing darts and seeing what hits.
[02:16] jfw: ("penetrate and patch" in other words)
[02:18] jfw: since high assurance is kinda the whole point of having our own interpreter, it gets the fine-toothed-comb treatment.
Day changed to 2024-11-14
[02:23] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/a-perplexing-curiosity-from-the-depths-of-scheme-definitions/ - that's one of the two curiosities out.
Day changed to 2024-11-15
[03:37] jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Nov-2024/#12535 - up to 388000 blocks. it's doing typically 2-6 blocks per minute, with the occasional long period of nothing as per the known weakness of the sync code.
[03:37] sourcerer: 2024-11-09 18:33:20 (#jwrd) jfw: http://jfxpt.com/2024/jwrd-logs-for-Oct-2024/#12504 - this guy's up to 374700.
[03:42] jfw: courtesy of whaack's explorer I'm seeing that the blocks in that range are mostly toward the full side, though sometimes much smaller. I expect it's likely to slow down a bit more in a logarithmic kinda way just due to the increasing size of the data set, but overall seems a perfectly respectable rate for keeping up once it's synced, and even for the sync itself as long as there's no rush
[03:50] jfw: though another point is that this is with a luxurious 30GB RAM soaked up in page cache.
[03:51] jfw: so if the box is carved up for other uses, the node won't have all that to itself.
[03:52] jfw: what do you make of the data points so far, dorion? we last discussed in the back room, "testing btc node performance on hdd was one thing to do with the new box"
[03:53] jfw: latest from the ISP is I got their invoicing process unclogged (some front office drone typo'd an email address on the handoff) and they've successfully received their first payment from us, so that closes the loop.
[03:54] jfw: cash deposit at the bank worked, no further accounts/dox necessary.
[03:59] jfw: extrapolating 4 bpm gives 84 days to finish the current sync
[04:32] jfw: the limitation we still have on booting is that lilo can't install to a RAID1 over 2 TB. an upgrade option with minimal time and materials cost, then, is to keep the existing 600G RAID1 for a boot volume plus whatever application group might want its own "dedicated spindle"; then buy two max-size HDDs for a second RAID1 data volume.
[04:36] jfw: or, go hybrid and use one or two SSDs for that 'boot' volume and put the node there
[04:41] jfw: or, go with some small/cheap device for the boot volume, ssd perhaps for less power draw, and just the 2 new HDDs for data, which leaves room for a warm spare.
[04:41] jfw: possibly there'd be room for that even with the 2-SSD RAID.
[04:42] jfw: I'm not that attached to the 'warm spare' though.
[04:52] jfw: the beauty of option 1 is we could open for business right now, add the new HDDs at our convenience, and not have to migrate anything. options 2 and 3 will both take my time to set up the new boot volume, and option 2 entails the most outlay on SSDs.
[05:00] jfw: an option 4 is to fuck around with the software to deal with that limitation, which has long term value but seems to be what we have the least bandwidth to handle right now.