< Notes...

AWS was down, is down and it is taking half of the Internet with it. So much about resilience, eh? “Move to the Cloud”, they said. “You will seldom be down”, they said.

“Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine.”

This interview with Andrej Karpathy was interesting to see and hear. The guy is pretty smart, and I can’t wait for Eureka Labs AI course, LLM101n, to exist.

“Attribution matters to me, I want contributors to always get full credit for their effort. This is how you preserve the git history of a project you are bringing into another project.”

I came across TIL: Merging two git projects—can’t remember how, it was an open tab—which I think is a good note to keep around here. The gist is pretty much:

cd alpha
git remote add -f  beta [beta repository URL]
git merge beta/main --allow-unrelated-histories

“‘Pig butchering’ scams resemble the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter. Victims invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities before they are conned out of their money. Scammers refer to victims as “pigs,” and may leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to “fatten up” the victim into believing they are in trusted partnerships before they defraud the victims of their assets—the ‘butchering.’”

Today I learned. There are so many names given to scams, financial and otherwise, that one looses track. Pig butchering was one of those I missed.

“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”

Oh dear, oh dear. Now this spells like “we want more money, and now we’ll get it from poor lonely souls.”

It is not often that I see a rejection of a pull request so politely, and clearly explained. Heck, this one ought to be a first, at least for me. After a thorough explanation, the project’s owner concludes:

“I recommend closing this PR. The original implementation is secure and maintainable. Thank you for your contribution, but we must prioritize security in this security-sensitive codebase.”

For as much as I liked Steve Jobs, I didn’t know him personally. I liked (and still do) how he was presented to us. I know now that he had many issues of his own. This user comment on Hacker News made sense to me:

“One part of his legacy that will forever be misunderstood is that being brutally honest, being demanding, being abrasive is a trait that only translates to success when you are at the top. Countless mid level managers believe it is the only way to lead.

For Steve Jobs, it’s not that being an asshole was his secret sauce. It’s that his unique position allowed him to survive the downsides of his personality.”

Today marks the 14th anniversary of Steve Jobs death, at the age of 56.

An excerpt from Fedric Brown’s 1954 short story “Answer”. Emphasis mine.

“The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.” “Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”
He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?” The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
“Yes, now there is a God.”
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bold of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

➝ Via Hacker News.

“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this!”

I came across the following quote, and that sent me through the rabbit hole. The quote goes (and there are several variations of it):

“Be not afraid of any man, no matter what his size; when danger threatens, call on me and I will equalize”.

It seems that the exact wording for this came from Winchester (not Colt), thought I haven’t found verifiable sources for that. One bit caught my attention, though, which relates to Colt, and a phrase on similar sentiment, which is “God created men equal, Col. Colt made them equal.” According to PBS, Colt died fairly young, “having never fired a gun at another person”.

A user on Slashdot, referring to Steve Wozniak’s decision of selling his Apple stock, wrote: “Smart man. Great engineer. Bad decision. Happens to all of us.” To which Woz himself replied:

“I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.”

Oh my gawd! This is an incident I didn’t know about, and I would have rather remained ignorant about it. Now can’t erase it from mind… I mean, it “went into passengers’ eyes, mouths, hair, and onto clothing and personal belongings, many of which were soaked”. Primordial shudders.

We wouldn’t need ad blockers if your ads weren’t obnoxius, privacy invasive, and tasteless. Now you want us to subscribe, or stop using ad blockers (or both!), so that you can be supported. See the cycle you have created? If I were to condone ads, I would for sure pick Carbon Ads.

“hi <my GitHub nick>, I noticed you stargazed <repository I starred>. Seems like you’re interested in the same kind of productivity software. I’d love your feedback for <web page for product they are advertising>.”

Getting more and more of these type of emails. They must be getting that information from some kind of GitHub API, right? I mean, sometimes they are plainly inventing things, but sometimes they are right on the spot. Is GitHub selling us out? Microsoft would never do such thing, wouldn’t they?

Re: #1752083523

It believe it means they are not leaning left, nor right or, in other words, neutral. Kind of “factual, impartial, and fair”. Makes sense, right? Anyway, unless told otherwise, “that’s my story, and I sticking to it.”

Does anyone knows what the meaning of this symbol is? I have seem it on websites without explanations, nor links to anywhere. Just the SVG by itself. All my searches have been futile.

In love with the work of Max. Specifically minimator, graxel, breaklock, commitbeat, and vivus. Go browse his repositories, you will not be disappointed!

Learning how to fly, just like birds do, it’s quite easy. But don’t take my words for it, read it all by yourself—the illustrated version is awesome! I am talking—if you haven’t followed the previous links—about “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy.

All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.

Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

It has been almost 14 years since Mark Pilgrim disappeared akin to what has been described as an “infosuicide”. I still miss his writings, and hold the hope that he may, one day, come back. I hope and wish all is well with him, and family.

SUBJECT: A very bad news for you
---
I want to inform you about a very bad situation for you. However, you can benefit from it, if you will act wisely. Have you heard of Pegasus? This is a spyware program that installs on computers and smartphones and allows hackers to monitor the activity of device owners. It provides access to your webcam, messengers, emails, call records, etc. It works well on Android, iOS, and Windows. I guess, you already figured out where I’m getting at.

These people watching all my moves, specifically when I engage in activities related to “highly controversial porn videos”, recording all my actions with their “spyware program”, learning “about all aspects of [my] private life”, and concluding that I have a “sick perversion” are getting it all wrong. Instead of demanding BTC from me they should, instead, be paying me for all the entertainment I sure am bringing them.

At the end of 2024, Moo Deng was a cutie, admired by millions around the world. I mean, how could we not, right? She was, and remains, a very famous pygmy hippopotamus! 🥰🦛

Freepik has lots of AI in it, amongst other things. The site looks crafted with good taste, it is clean, and fast, and has freebies that could come handy. This isn’t an advert, of course; merely a note to myself reminding me it exists, in case it’s ever needed.

I used to keep bookmarks for the boy, keeping resources I thought might be useful for him to be used on school assignments, etc. Reviewing them today I found this gem from 2016. So much has changed since! Prices, for sure, and some of the things we eat, maybe? Notice how much healthier the food from some poorer countries is, in comparison to, say, the US.

Check out also “Rise and Shine”, to see what kids around the world eat for breakfast (from 2014).

Getting lost on the interweb is my newly found hobby, and the reason I have gotten so fond of blogrolls, and webrings. It is amazing what you can find while aimlessly following links that happen to catch your attention—or simply clicking/tapping, daring to see what’s on the other side. For each rubbish site out there that we should avoid, there are 10 others wholesomely worth it. I am specially fond of minimalist, text only websites, and those who use exquisite typography.

Thomas Dambo’s trolls—and his other creations—come across as other-worldly. His entire works collection is simply too amazing not to note. Makes me wish there were more trolls in our world, don’t you agree? Kind of “have trolls, no war”.

Well, this is something you don’t see everyday day, from left to right: Mark Russinovich, Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, and David Cutler. Bill and Linus meeting in person, and making it to the same photo. Yeah, a first?

The Baroque period produced some of the greatest artists humankind has ever seen. I recently came across “The Abduction of Proserpina” on Kottke. Although I saw it with my own eyes, I couldn’t help but feeling, again, amazed and awestruck by the artist incredible skills that make this cold marble so lifelike.

I have not mentioned Headscale before, even though I use it every day. I have my iPhone (on demand), my Mac, my Linux laptop (on demand), and my two VPS connected to it. Headscale is an open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server. You can use the Tailscale client—which is available for all platforms—to connect to it. It is amazing, and worthy—at the very minimum—of a star on its GitHub repository.

“Less Wrong” sure is an interesting place. For the untrained—like me—it is hard to grasp, as its navigation, and method of engagement, are fairly unique.

“LessWrong is an online forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. Each day, we aim to be less wrong about the world than the day before.”

Totally hypnotised by this person’s creations. It is so easy to fall in love with their generative art, don’t you think?!

More of Yann Le Gall generative art is available at their Instagram. In Yoda’s speaking style, a fan I have become!

The sheer power of a tornado in Kansas, filmed by a drone in 2022. Simply incredible. “No lives were lost as a result of this EF3 tornado, despite immense damage and nearly 1,000 structures impacted”.

Feeling the sudden desire to “ditherising” all images I have around here. Doing so will change them to monochrome, and to Atkinson dither, similar to this one. Should I, and do it retroactively, or just from now on?

Reading Alice Barlett’s weekly note earlier today, in which a daughter tells her father “Daddy, you are the man I love the most”, reminded me when the girl once told me too “Papá, I want to marry someone like you”, just around the same age as “E”. It made me feel so appreciated, and loved! I will never forget it.

Came across this thought, which ended up being a partial quote by Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, which I liked quite a bit once I found it whole.

“If I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you, and we can talk.”

➝ Via Loon thoughts.

The insane ability of some people to write so fluidly makes me jelaous. Yet, I understand and I appreciate it. If everybody had the same skill life would be boring, right?

These are the replies and interactions of someone who truly loves Golang. I wouldn’t know, I am not a programmer, but about the “simple, minimal syntax—master the core in hours, not months”… hmm, I don’t know mon. 😅

Grand Master Carlsen, the world’s top ranked chess player, was forced into a draw by “the world”.

“Overall, ’the world’ has played very, very sound chess from the start. Maybe not going for most enterprising options, but kind of keeping it more in vein with normal chess — which isn’t always the best strategy, but it worked out well this time…”

Imagine that! One against 143,000, and it ends in a draw. I would take that as a win!

On the U.S. suing Apple on iPhone’s monopoly (is that even a thing?!), a comment on The New York Times:

“I bought, own and use an iPhone from Apple because I like it. I like that Apple creates what I think is a safer environment, and that my data is better protected. I like how smoothly it works. In fact, I’m ecstatically happy with it. Much more than I am with most products I purchase and use.

I am looking at cars, and find that there are tech products that use proprietary technology and require subscriptions. Tesla will charge me to activate an auto garage door opener that’s already installed in their $50,000 car. BMW wants me to pay a subscription to use a heated seat that I’d buy (and own) with the car.

I suppose I don’t have to buy a Tesla or BMW (and I’m not). People also don’t have to buy an iPhone.

For those who want them, don’t wreck the features we buy it for. That seems the antithesis of a competitive market.”

This blog post about making vegetable stock from scratch at home—that is, not at an enterprise scale—had me at the first paragraph:

“After learning how to season food correctly, homemade stock is the single best thing anyone can do for his cooking. A stock is a liquid extraction of complementary flavors, a broad palette upon which sharper splashes of color may be painted.”

It is past 22:00, and I am still awake. For reasons I can’t explain, I don’t feel sleepy at all—which is odd for a weekday. I am going to pay for this tomorrow, I am sure.

Meanwhile I have been following links up and down at wonger.dev, especially these. Lots of interesting stuff there!