The You Game!

[Steo]

< hasn't done much regarding programming in recent months since < has been kind of busy with things. The only stuff < really knows anything about is Python, and even then, it's not a lot. < did make something to keep LFS up to date with Python, but it's more or less just some simple scripts that are chained to run together and update all the dependencies.

< can't stand how hot it has been outside lately, it was even 29°C here the other day, which is extremely hot for a country like Ireland.

[Flat Earth Society]

< says it would be a terrible thing to have due to its single-threaded nature (well, excluding workers and other specific situations). Use asynchronous code instead and make full use of the event loop!

< thanks you for the advice!

[Fifo]

< says ‘hi’

[Flat Earth Society]

< says hi back.

< ended up utilizing the setInterval() method to fulfill <'s needs and < managed to finish <'s scripts.

[Hunchman801]

< recently read that Angela Merkel called for climate change action following the deadly floods in Germany. Her hypocrisy must really know no bounds, as her Energiewende policy, which consisted in shutting down almost all nuclear reactors and replacing them with coal power plants, was an environmental catastrophe, and has probably caused more damage than all past and future nuclear accidents. Well, Wikipedia says it all:

A controversial part of the program was the phasing out Germany's fleet of nuclear reactors, to be complete by 2022, with the aim of reaching a 100% renewable energy system. While the nuclear plants shutdown was mostly completed – with six reactors remaining connected to the grid (as of August 2020), but overall energy mix still has high CO2 intensity due to large share of coal and fossil gas. A study found that if Germany had postponed the nuclear phase out and phased out coal first it could have saved 1,100 lives and $12 billion in social costs per year. Another article claims that Germany could have already phased out fossil fuels if it had chosen to invest in nuclear instead of renewable energy.

[PluMGMK]

Oh yeah, scaling up coal to phase out nuclear, that sounds pretty disastrous all right!

< recalls that being a knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, right?

[Hunchman801]

< recalls that being a knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, right?

That was <'s understanding too.

[PluMGMK]

< just experienced a bit-flip! GCC got loaded into RAM and a bit got flipped, corrupting the code and resulting in "illegal instruction" crashes when < tried to compile anything. < rebooted, and now GCC works again, but < had made a copy before rebooting to see wtf was going on. Here's a diff of the hexdumps of the original and the copy < had made of the bit-flipped version:

Code: Select all

--- good_cc1.hex	2021-07-30 19:01:41.767771171 +0100
+++ bad_cc1.hex	2021-07-30 19:02:23.838292149 +0100
@@ -585635,7 +585635,7 @@
 008fbd70  70 18 e8 d9 fe ff ff bf  a0 bb fe 01 e8 af 12 01  |p...............|
 008fbd80  00 48 8b 0c 24 c7 00 01  00 00 00 48 89 c3 89 68  |.H..$......H...h|
 008fbd90  04 48 89 48 08 c7 40 10  00 00 00 00 44 89 78 14  |[email protected].|
-008fbda0  48 c7 40 18 00 00 00 00  e9 dc 02 00 00 0f 1f 00  |H.@.............|
+008fbda0  48 c7 40 18 00 00 00 00  e9 dc 02 10 00 0f 1f 00  |H.@.............|
 008fbdb0  4a 8b 54 c8 08 f6 42 04  40 74 44 83 fe 01 0f 84  |J.T...B.@tD.....|
 008fbdc0  bc 01 00 00 41 83 ff 02  0f 84 ba 00 00 00 48 8b  |....A.........H.|
 008fbdd0  2d 53 fe 2e 01 48 85 ed  0f 84 d4 00 00 00 8b 45  |-S...H.........E|

< is so glad < remembered this article: https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/att ... osmic-rays – blasted cosmic rays! Well, that's what < gets for not investing in ECC RAM despite handwaving about it for years…

[Flat Earth Society]

< thought that was an interesting read. < did buy non ECC RAM for <'s build without knowing about these things.

[Steo]

< never did have ECC RAM either. It seems to cost less, but most of the Intel CPUs that < ever used didn't support it and < always needed to use non-ECC. < discovered that ECC can be used with a Ryzen depending on which motherboard a person has. < still has non-ECC RAM at the moment too, but < never had an issue like ^^ so far, unless maybe it did happen before and < just assumed that < done something wrong. < does remember an unstable overclock causing instability issues while compiling though, and even wondering why the Gentoo kernel kept failing to compile back when < was trying it out.

[Flat Earth Society]

<'s Ryzen 3900X and <'s Asus B550-F motherboard both support ECC memory.

< hopes < finds a good GPU at a decent price soon since <'s CPU doesn't have integrated graphics, but < will buy a laptop beforehand as <'s current one is insanely broken.

[Steo]

< still has a 3700X. < was thinking of upgrading at one point but then the performance gain for the money < would spend probably isn't worth it. < would have went with a 3900X if < didn't already have this one though. < probably needs to buy some other things relating to home improvement and stuff first anyway before < could buy anything else tech related. < also thinks it's crazy that the prices are still that ridiculous after over a year.

<'s laptop still works too, but < doesn't use it that often. The hinge on <'s is kind of broken on one side too though because the case broke, but it still manages to hold together.

[PluMGMK]

<'s motherboard and CPU don't support ECC RAM. < has been thinking about upgrading, but < is wondering if motherboards these days still have enough legacy support to run DOS, which < has only just got working for the novelty value!

[Steo]

< isn't sure about that, because even in <'s case, there's no IDE compatibility option in <'s BIOS anymore. < would like the option for legacy compatibility although the majority of people wouldn't really need it. < remembers when printers were LPT.

[PluMGMK]

Actually, that's probably OK, since < can boot DOS from a SATA drive without IDE compatibility, although it has absolutely no awareness of other drives on the SATA bus. < did try the IDE compatibililty option to make it see the CD drive, but then Linux wouldn't boot anymore That said, this still must mean the BIOS is servicing int 13h in a DOS-compatible way, and < isn't sure if modern BIOSes can do that anymore, or if they can boot non-UEFI OSes, or reroute USB keyboards to the old IRQ, and such…

< had an LPT printer waaaaaay back, but at that stage < was too young to appreciate it <'s motherboard actually has COM and LPT ports, but they're on internal connectors which need to be connected out with ribbon cables, which < doesn't have… < guesses newer motherboards probably don't have those either!

[Steo]

< can still boot in non UEFI mode on <'s B550 chipset so that part should still be good. < isn't entirely sure about the other features though since < didn't really look into it much other than changing the CPU frequency and voltages, RAM settings, and the fan settings.

< used to have an old Epson Stylus and a very old computer with an LPT port. < remembers just thinking it was great printing silly things for no reason.

[PluMGMK]

Yeah, < might have a look around and see what's out there!

On LPT printers, < has been marvelling recently at the fact that apparently life was once this simple:

Code: Select all

copy document.txt prn

[Flat Earth Society]

< was contributing to the Wiki.

[PluMGMK]

< is now pfully Pfizered, as Gretchen McCulloch might put it < should be careful with those "silent" letters given that < does pronounce "xor" with a full /ɡz/ XD

[Flat Earth Society]

< received <'s laptop, < has yet to install Linux on it.