@bsmaalders@mas.to
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

bsmaalders

@bsmaalders@mas.to

Mechanical engineer, software dev, Steam boater, Airstreamer, Dad.
Ranger Full Gear at Critical NW, SOAK and Black Rock City
Maker: Machining, welding, wood working, electronics.
Ham: KN6HOH.
Ex Solaris Kernel.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

bsmaalders, to random
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MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

I spent way too much time today disassembling two bicycle wheels, so that I could begin the process of transplanting this Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub into a 27 inch rim that will fit my road bike.

While I had the hub free of a wheel, I ended up partially disassembling it so I could clean it and grease it, since it felt pretty gunky and sticky when spinning.

I was too scared to take it completely apart because there are a lot of little pieces inside, but I took it apart enough to get it working well again. It looks much nicer now too

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bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@MLE_online

I cleaned and reassembled one of these 50 years ago; yes there are a lot of pieces, but its doable.

In case you don't know about these old pages, this is an excellent reference for old 3 speed hubs:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/sturmey-archer/aw.html

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@MLE_online
I assume this is per side; e.g your 27" has 36 holes? 40 hole 27" rims are out here; you may have to find tandem rims, though.

e.g. https://www.velocityusa.com/product/rims/dyad-27

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@MLE_online Understood... but they're out there, you're not looking for a unicorn. In any case, you can probably lace it skipping two holes on each side in the hub; you may need a few different length spokes. Considering the number of times I rode my bikes w/ missing spokes after jumping curbs, a few missing won't actually hurt.

jacqueline, to random
@jacqueline@chaos.social avatar

“as fast as hand rolled assembly” oh so slower that c then?

ducks

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@jacqueline Agreed. The only legitimate reason anymore for "hand rolled assembly" is using instructions the compiler won't emit - typically privileged ones, if one is an OS developer, or some fancy vector ops gizmo. Ok, I guess we can also admit the first bootstrap port of a C compiler to a brand new architecture :).

stuartmarks, to random
@stuartmarks@mastodon.social avatar

Attended the Weihnachtsmarkt (German Holiday Market) in downtown Mountain View this evening. It’s organized by the German International School (see https://gissv.org and https://germanholidaymarket.org/ — but note it’s over now). There was lots of German food, pastries, Glühwein, Christmas music, decorations, jewelry, crafts, and ornaments. But I didn’t see any stollen elections.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@stuartmarks I was lucky enough to be on a work trip to Frankfurt in early December when I worked at Oracle... Frankfurt's Weihnachtsmarkt was a lot of fun. Cold and snowy, but the Glühwein definitely helps.

bsmaalders, to random
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

I got the latest COVID booster today at our local pharmacy. Remember folks, it's a good time to prepare for the holidays and crowds.

evacide, to random
@evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

Some of you don't come from a family where "Is the political situation bad enough for us to flee the country?" is a regular topic of dinner conversation and it shows.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@evacide When I was a teenager in US in the 1970s, the draft was definitely causing many of us to think about exactly this. I was young enough to miss it, but our paperboy when we were young kids died in Vietnam.

mhoye, to random
@mhoye@mastodon.social avatar

People go to Stack Overflow because the docs and error messages are garbage. TLDR exists because the docs and error messages are garbage. People ask ChatGPT for help because the docs and error messages are garbage. We are going to lose a generation of competence and turn programming into call-and-response glyph-engine supplicancy because we let a personality cult that formed around the PDP-11 in the 1970s convince us that it was pure and good that docs and error messages are garbage.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@ljrk @mhoye (I worked at Sun 1989->2017).

The technical writers at Sun were definitely professional and persistent. Like many things there, that department was cut repeatedly over the years to save money. Many of us ended up writing our own man pages when resources became scarce. The linker folks always wrote their own; the SunOS Linker and Library Manual is an excellent resource for Linux as well, since so much of Linux's dynamic linking was patterned after Sun's.

molly0xfff, to Cats
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

scientific breakthrough: a thermometer that can tell the temperature with no sensors needed

by measuring the proximity between my two cats, who do not normally like to snuggle with one another, you can tell that the heat in my house is broken

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@molly0xfff Since we've only had one cat for a long time, we had discovered that the house temperature was inversely proportional to the radius of curvature of the cat's spine. However, the radiant heat in the floors of our new house has rendered this formerly reliable temperature metric unreliable.

grammargirl, to random
@grammargirl@zirk.us avatar

Kitchen cabinets with glass doors: great in theory, awful in practice.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@grammargirl
It can work, although perhaps not ideal for random bags of cereal, etc.

aka_pugs, to random
@aka_pugs@mastodon.social avatar

"SunOS Multi-thread Architecture" - Winter USENIX, 1991.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ey3K7zzKbT4gNNdSDzjJllgDRhdYtZgY/view?usp=sharing IIRC, this was for Solaris (SunOS 5+)

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@eichin @aka_pugs

This was definitely SunOS 5 (aka Solaris 2). Originally used a two level thread model due to memory/chip limitations that locked down at least one page of memory of memory for every kernel thread. Later on as memory became more plentiful, the complications of handling signals correctly in a two level model (plus all the bugs) led Roger Faulkner to propose and implement a single level libthread, and soon merged it w/ libc.

bsmaalders,
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@stuartmarks @eichin @aka_pugs I believe it worked some of the time :). The signal handling required a lot of rigor and tight integration with libc, something that wasn't completely appreciated in the beginning.

waldoj, to random
@waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

The FAA has struggled with staffing air traffic control towers for decades. Why? Reagan. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html?unlocked_article_code=UaKymtMZQ7W67vHlHKHoFfAIjRN6iBAHv6yBNzi12o3q6UUHpOjUprxHdqqwv7qqGzv6nFp2ZjY7In0Lmr-ilHQnKBNNKjwLvyzDN-SWpaeLSP-A83niIzSL9qVUBmHEuQraKUbmthY4sxFCfPGa5C_KSiLjjJfNiyEgYtBbGrX_4QCu-yHwYcRnhuZU6ieoCD3FiO6IWuqomX23hgOH9HA8xVwtEgB0_74gnrwjqNp6GDVoDEwWD892Gys0-0YnkT0Gqx9g9te-oxHyxyXc3MPSUt28Y5uPX9elO5dY19BVWyLvJhOdUWBnVzpb2_10oT2Bk2vm5HLt-YZB9JnTegLlJt16058z9SlHxNCMVCao1ctw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@thatandromeda @waldoj Perhaps a somewhat realistic ATC game could be used to help identify those w/ the requisite characteristics? A study of leisure activities successful flight controllers enjoyed before they entered training might provide clues as well.

kwf, to random
@kwf@social.afront.org avatar

My work laptop's battery now goes from 20% to full in less than 30 minutes.

This doesn't bode well.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@kwf 2017 MPB? I had two from work; both died w/ battery issues. Latest M1 Pro has been excellent.

kwf, to random
@kwf@social.afront.org avatar

One of my hobbies is making fun of OpenSUSE users for how ridiculous ZYpp is for downloading packages in 1MB or 256kB chunks, and getting the users started on justifying how this is so much better than just downloading the whole file with one HTTP request.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@kwf

After our experiences working on the packaging system in Solaris (IPS), I appreciate how hard it is to make these decisions.

On poor internet connections, the observed chances of successfully downloading small chunks are much higher than if you attempt to download the entire large file at once.

Since IPS downloaded only the files that had changed between package versions and the vast majority of files are relatively small, we chose to download a file at a time.

pluralistic, to ai
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

#Google's #AIHype Circle: We have to do #Bard because everyone else is doing #AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard.

https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@spamfodder @wa7iut @godzero @ukuku @pluralistic

The inflation in the 1970s and the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 reducing local property taxes led to statewide tight budgets as state funds went increasingly to supporting K-12 education. UC tuition was order $270/quarter in the late 70s iirc.

We should make a college education affordable again for students of all backgrounds.
I took advantage of the junior college system, as did our kids.

bsmaalders,
@bsmaalders@mas.to avatar

@spamfodder @wa7iut @godzero @ukuku @pluralistic

Absolutely. Prop 13 was sold as benefiting Grandma so she could live in her house as long as she wanted... but it also applied to corporations. Grandma from 1978 has long gone to her reward.. but the corporate owners are alive and kicking. In 1975, commercial properties paid 46% percent of the property tax roll in Los Angeles County; by 2017 those properties paid just 28%.

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