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[moose-mousse]

Meandering thoughts.... part 2

Remember. Tech companies being competent, is a myth. Companies are teenagers showing up for a presentation in history class still drunk from an all night kegger, just making up whatever stories they make up on the spot… except everyone in the class will lose their income, and have their life stability ripped away from them if they don't tell the company that they are absolutely right and are getting a A+.

They have no idea what they are doing. Everyone just pretends they do.

Here is a good way to think about it:

600 million years ago, life changed forms from single celled life, to multicellular life. Because there are niches those lifeforms can fill that single celled life cannot. They are able to do things single cells simply cannot.

But it took a long time because there are many steps you have to go though before you can be multicellular. One of which is instead of doing cellular division as fast as you can, you can slow it down in response to situations. Like "If there is not enough food around, slow down so we can survive on much less food, rather than dying while trying to divide".

Otherwise, when you try to get specialized cells to do different things, they will grow at different rates and essentially… be a creature born with cancer that kills it.

Most likely, failures happened many many many times before multicellular life managed a form that could work. Many of these failures would be a multicellular life form happening… and then dying out a few minutes later from cancer.

Multicellular life became more and more complex.

After a while, big creatures like ants had evolved. These are doing the same trick that the single cells did to turn to multicellular.

They had evolved everything needed for cooperation, creatures that each had a special function.

There are several ways to do this, ants certainly have a good way, since 20% of all biomass is ants… But it lacks… flexibility. Ants can often control how many worker ants vs soldier ants are created, and so the colony can adapt to situations… But only if the tools needed for the situation is one is have evolved to handle…

A more flexible ways, is what the Homo genus have done. We could call it "society". More than a tribe.

Now, it have very much allowed the Homo lifeforms to fill a new niche… but since it is SUPER recent, a lot of it is still… bad. But every-time evolution finds a new niece, it evolves FAST for a while.

Like, imagine a cell that inside 50 generations had evolved into more than 10-25 different lifeforms. We would most certainly describe that cell as "Mutating disturbingly fast". That is about how fast human ways of of structuring ourselves change.

Like there is no 1 way to measure when a new society starts existing or stops existing…. But most do NOT last a long time. Ways of organizing humans change and switch and mutate, evolve, die and gets invented all the time. First ones was very location locked. Countries in different forms. And only in the last 500 years did they finally evolve up to "Half decent" where we did not have stupid systems like feudalism, where we had to have massive civil wars ever-time people disagreed about who should inherit the throne, and if a single king was an idiot, the country just collapsed.

Now we have a new weird organization. More flexible than countries, who are so tied in with where they are. Corporations.

They are VERY young. And so, like always when evolution have a new niece… very shit.

Corporations grow huge, with no thought for "Why should we become bigger and more powerful", become powerful and force everyone else to accept it, even if it does shitty things to become powerful. It then have no need to make good products. Which is good. Because that is hard. They can just go "We are Microsoft/Monsanto/whatever. You will take whatever we give you, and smile" They are cancer. Growing until it kills its hosts ( Countries ), or gets removed.

[moose-mousse]

Meandering thoughts.... part 1

Authers note: Got high wrote what I was thinking. Be warned:

Got my code reviewed, and passed, at work.

And when testing the temperature sensor I had made a driver for… I was getting questions about why it could not measure anything bellow 0.

Which I could easily answer with "Because I told it to".

Because I was told to send the data out in fullscale… which I was told are simply a 14 bit representation of the temprature from a minimum to a maximum.

And the minimum for this sensor, was 0. So I clamped the values: if ( temperature > maximum) { temperature = maximum} else if (temperature < minimum) { temperature =minimum}

Turns out… that is not correct. The full-scale simply is the very weird way we say what a bit means. Normally like this "Each LSB ( least significant bit ) represent 0.0634 degrees celsius" So if the sensor returns 1000, you go: 63.4 = 1000 * 0.0634;

So what I HAD to encode the number as was that constant, but on 16 bit, in signed form.

Now… that is my bad. I did not understand a thing, and did not ask for an explanation… And the ones I got from the intro to the codebase was "its fullscale", and I did not have access to documentation.

BUT! The guy who DID know this, reviewed my code…

So why, oh why, did he not see the the function clearly marked "Claimping values" in there and then tell me it was wrong?

This review process is by the way partly for SECURITY! If giant breaks in business logic is not found, what do you think the chance is that a security issue is found? My guess is 0%

Remember. Tech companies being competent, is a myth. Companies are teenagers showing up for a presentation in history class still drunk from an all night kegger, just making up whatever stories they make up on the spot… except everyone in the class will lose their income, and have their life stability ripped away from them if they don't tell the company that they are absolutely right and are getting a A+.

[moose-mousse]

"programmers and computer scientists are all trans women" is not true. the truth, from experience, is that if you go into a coding or computer science class there will be maybe one closeted or stealth trans woman surrounded by the worst men you will ever possibly meet.

[moose-mousse]

Fun fact, those two methods are NOT just different syntax for the same thing.

"If" Checks a condition. It compares it with something else. If you have a chain of many if/if else/if else /if else statments, the last one will only check its condition AFTER all the others have done so and failed. The if statements further down will be run with a delay compared to the ones further up. Only small, but real.

A switchcase runs every option with the same delay. No matter how many there are.

Because it uses its input, together with a constant, to get the correct memory place where the instructions are stored for the case, and jumps there.

It works by the compiler placing all the options in predictable memory so this method work.

So the swirch case does not compare its input to anything, it turns it into an address and goes there.

So the delay on every case is the same.

This can be important, if you are using the current time to measure time down to the micro or nanosecond, which is quite normal to want when you work with embedded systems :D

But rarely when working with higher level languages!

Its neat!

You know you wanna use it… So why don’t you?

[moose-mousse]

So probably this is old news for most of us on Tumblr, but binary gender is deprecated:

[moose-mousse]

I am very sorry :c

Only helpful thing I have is "Try to make the best of it"

Python IS useful language. Often testing is done in python.

But I know the feeling from when I learned Kotlin... Do not like that language...

The thing that sucks hardest on the entire planet is being a good programmer, who is just fucking blowing it with this fucking python test. BECAUSE IT'S ALL ABOUT WROTE MEMORIZATION! Being a developer isn't about memorization, it's about solving problems. Memorization is for google!

But I am gonna be 350 dollars in the hole for a certification for a language I will get no use out of. And that I don't even like writing in.

But I am getting some money for doing this so doing it I shall.

[moose-mousse]

That is what experience is :3

Traveling in time to tell yourself the solution

Travelling back in time to tell myself that sticking with Lua and Love2D was the solution

[moose-mousse]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[moose-mousse]

Most efficient way to catch up:

Ask fellow students for help. If you are part of social groups with more senior students, then ask them too.

I... HATE doing this... I really really do.

If I could in any way, shape or form just work extra hard to get it done instead, I would.

... But it IS still the most efficient way to keep up, sadly :s

April 16, 2024 • Wednesday

It's only the third week of semester and I'm already kinda struggling—

Someone please tell me not to eat things out of spite that make your disability worse (currently having a flare and planning efficient lecture skips for tomorrow and also internally crying)

🎧 Labyrinth — Taylor Swift

[moose-mousse]

[moose-mousse]

In order to learn something, I use it.

That means using it badly to start with. When it is a C++ thing, I make a tiny demo program in Godbolt with comments for myself. I then go over it until I know it for an exam, or I polish it everytime I need it. That way, the things I need to most, I have put the most work into.

For arcitecture like von Neumann, I would have the model drawn up, and then on a whiteboard, go through how the computer runs a tiny assembler program ( Like adding 2 variables together and saving it in a third ), and write it up in normal english text.

The CPU fetches the first variable from memory, into a register

The CPU fetches the second variable from memory, into a register

The CPU uses the ALU to add the variables together in the first variables place

You can use this Tom Scot video to get a good start:

If I need to be able to draw the model from memory, I then practice that AFTER I can use it.

It is much easier to learn drawing a model when you know how to use it, since it will be obvious to you when you are missing a bit or placed something wrong, because you know how it is supposed to work.

I don't know what context you need this in but... unless you are getting very specialized, the von neuman model is more something you should have a idea of what it is, and if you need it in the future, you can look it up then... it is not terrible important for understanding most things computer in my experience

okay question: how do you guys study graphics? i have to study —among other things—the von neumann model for next week and i just realized i have no idea how. how do i remember which part is which? how to draw it? the only idea i have is to stare at the page for an hour or find a way to magicly develop photographic memory overnight. so, if anyone has a tip or a technique or something, i'd be forever grateful to know

[moose-mousse]

My boss: "So Moose, can you use the release toolchain to generate me a .hex file to run tests on?"

Moose, after several hours of trying: "No.

I mean it is theoretically possible... I JUST need to change the correct variables... but since our toolchain is an excel spreadsheet with buttons that activates visual basic macroes that calls chains of .bat scripts, which works with Rensas compilers and... Ruby... for some reason... and have 0 documentation...I have no freaking clue what anything does or where I need to change what..."

[moose-mousse]

So... I finished my first task at my new job today! First one after I finished Uni!

Which was to write the software for a sensor that is going into at least 150,000 pumps over the next year... Alone...

It is being tested by... me

And i have recieved a full 1 hour intro to all the material, including the protocols, codebase, arcitecture and the task itself...

Which is good because there is no documentation for these things ... nor is the compiler supported... and since the MCU reaches end of life in 2 years and was never popular, there is 0 examples to work with online.

I can highly recommend working for insane people, it gives you a LOT of interesting work

[moose-mousse]

Your posts are erratic and behaviour most unsettling

[moose-mousse]

Hey Everyone! Please check out this video and contribute in making Danaher take accountability for the over inflation of their TB test cartridges that COULD be saving thousands if not millions of lives if they werent so unaffordable.

https://youtu.be/tSC06P9A5W4?si=Nzzpyht2ZfdLltBL

The bio of the video has a link to email templates and phone numbers so we can actively hold them accountable and I urge you to share this and participate.

I’ll put the link below if you just want to help but don’t have time for the video.

LINK

[moose-mousse]

Nuclear costs far far far more than any other green energy production. And that is without calculating storage of the waste in. Because our plan for how to store it is: " We do not have any", so we cannot budget it, exept "SUPER expensive"

We have so far build 0 long term storage facilities for nuclear fuel. We store 100% of all nuclear waste ever produced in temporary storages.

Why would you use lithium batteries for grid storage? Lithium batteries are good because of their weight to storage ratio, which does not matter for grid storage.

If you build ONLY wind power, you would need to produce many times more power than your peak need in order to make sure to produce enough for when the wind is not blowing much in large area... and it would STILL be cheaper than nuclear. And we are NOT doing that. We are mixing every kind of renewable, combined with harvested hydrogen.

Nuclear power plants exist to produce neclear material for weapons. That is why governments are willing to pay more money for less power. Nothing more.

its so fucking funny that nuclear waste is such a contentious topic. like yeah those damn nuclear advocates need to figure out somewhere reasonable to put that nuclear waste. for now we will  be sticking with coal power because it puts its waste products safe and sound In Our Lungs, where they cannot hurt anybody,

[moose-mousse]

People who say you cannot code in HTML... have not done a lot of work in HTML