#ossasepia | 2019-11-05

jfw: good for you!

08:24

:) been a long day but I think I'll sleep well.

~ 1 hours 33 minutes ~

09:57

glad to hear it.

09:59

carrying over from #t, the correct word describing the contents of a blog is articles rather than "posts"; so there shall be no more "posts", only articles.

09:59

(trilema) 2019-11-05 mp_en_viaje: seems to me article's exactly what we're doing.

~ 2 hours ~

12:00

S#1063 O=1 LB=None E=2019-11-12 15:43:00.630180 (165h42) >>> selling items 1, 2 and 4 through 7 on http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bones/snsa_1_nov_2019.txt ; buyer to take possession at his own expense.

12:00

--- end of auction list, 0 total bids ---

12:01

jfw dorion you might want to have a look at ^

~ 3 hours 24 minutes ~

15:26

diana_coman: good morning. putting together a comp sounds both fun and worth my while; I will do it.

15:27

whaack: it is! and good for you :)

15:34

diana_coman: I would appreciate any advice on the subj. jfw and dorion do you have tips re acquiring parts in Central America?

15:49

whaack while we've acquired some things locally, a lot has been received via Miami forwarding address. Also, Panama City is quite different from your point breaking beach. What's the population there anyways and how far are you from San Jose ?

16:02

http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-03#1008727 << I had a sneaking suspicion that'd be the reply. Does Latin have the structure ?

16:02

Logged on 2019-11-03 15:41:02 diana_coman: dorion: greek is cannonical example there.

16:08

dorion: I'm not sure the exact population, but I believe it is <1k . To San Jose it's 3-7 hours depending on traffic / driving style.

16:10

dorion: i'm thinking my best bet is to do the Miami forwarding address, and then pick up packages from a post office in a nearby town

16:15

whaack probably, yeah.

16:21

whaack: There's specialist services like TiendaMia you can look into. Usually these take advantage of a "franchise" regime, only handling imports up to a certain value and in a certain quantity determined by the local aduanas.

16:23

BingoBoingo: ty I will check it out.

16:24

You may need to have some sort of local ID. It may be better to have things shipped to a pickup center of some sort rather than the home address depending on the quality of the local motorcycle couriers.

16:32

BingoBoingo: lol well I have some tico acquaintances that could help me with the first problem. the state of the roads here require adept maneuvering, i will spare the couriers the trouble.

16:38

*

whaack off to the saltmines

16:53

dorion: you can ask your questions in #a whenever convenient at any rate, at least it's stated and you'll get whatever answers you get.

16:55

it will probably be quite hard to pin him down for a conversation as such but you can still budget your time on this overall even if it ends up as 5 minutes today and 5 tomorrow; the important thing is overall to have a clear stop somewhere because otherwise it will just drag on.

↖

16:58

diana_coman thanks, 'the medium is the message'

17:00

S#1063 O=1 LB=10mn E=2019-11-12 15:43:00.630180 (160h42) >>> selling items 1, 2 and 4 through 7 on http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bones/snsa_1_nov_2019.txt ; buyer to take possession at his own expense.

17:00

--- end of auction list, 10mn total bids ---

17:01

fwiw I fully understand the need and the idea that it's possible to help there; unfortunately though I have long experience that shows it won't work but experience can't be directly passed on, obviously, it is what it is.

17:04

yeah, I accept the effects will be what they'll be, one of which being to demonstrate what I have to communicate and how I am currently going about it.

~ 2 hours 21 minutes ~

19:26

asciilifeform

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008814 << ftr he's scheduled for fri. 1530 new york. (and i wish moar people would work like this, for some reason nobody but dorion ever asked.)

19:26

snsabot

Logged on 2019-11-05 16:55:14 diana_coman: it will probably be quite hard to pin him down for a conversation as such but you can still budget your time on this overall even if it ends up as 5 minutes today and 5 tomorrow; the important thing is overall to have a clear stop somewhere because otherwise it will just drag on.

19:26

snsabot

(asciilifeform) 2019-11-05 asciilifeform: dorion: ok, friday 1530-1600 nyc time.

19:27

asciilifeform: I asked him specifically to fix some time.

19:27

(as I said in your chan too for that matter)

19:27

asciilifeform

a++

19:27

glad to hear it works best for you too that way, certainly.

19:28

asciilifeform

it worx 9000x better than folx expecting to find asciilifeform alive in middle of the night etc.

19:29

asciilifeform: absolutely.

19:29

http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008801 - whaack, would this your first build?

19:29

Logged on 2019-11-05 11:39:54 whaack: diana_coman: I would appreciate any advice on the subj. jfw and dorion do you have tips re acquiring parts in Central America?

19:30

and yeah, judging by the local rural level + BingoBoingo's xp in south america you are probably better off ordering stuff

19:31

http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008803 - sneakin' but right at least, can't complain there; what do you mean by does Latin have the structure?

19:31

Logged on 2019-11-05 12:07:45 dorion: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-03#1008727 << I had a sneaking suspicion that'd be the reply. Does Latin have the structure ?

19:32

diana_coman: The one thing I'd suggest beyond simply ordering is sweeping all the promising stores in the big city to see who carries things like civilized thermal paste, cables, etc. Some stuff simply isn't worth shipping if it can be avoided.

19:33

I suppose it depends on whether he can get them with same order or not

19:33

because the trouble is that in a rural area, who the fuck will have thermal paste and of good quality and in good condition?

19:35

jfw: do you have some time?

19:37

diana_coman: I assume folks living in committed ruralities do make adventures to the city or at least some sort of retail hub from time to time. Such has been my experience living in both North and South American rurality.

19:38

whaack, I'm not aware of the original context of the desktop-building thread but one question to consider is what to optimize it for - performance, reliability, 'purity'

19:38

BingoBoingo: yes, but honestly, who in CR actually builds own computer? ie even in San Jose, while one can possibly find some seller, I wouldn't really trust them to have much in stock/good stuff because demand ~0

19:39

diana_coman: I do. I've come down with a bit of a sore throat though, urgh.

19:39

jfw: he has only a bunch of laptops in his house, namely 2 crapples and 1 thinkpad; so his optimisation first is to actually get... a computer.

19:40

jfw: well, at least writing doesn't make it worse, hopefully.

19:40

diana_coman: This is a problem.

19:41

jfw: as it seems it will take a while until you might get to write down neatly all the stuff you've been working on, mind giving me a clearer summary here?

19:43

jfw: I'm looking at your list at http://fixpoint.welshcomputing.com/2019/planned-articles-as-of-october-2019/

19:44

the mp-wp patches and stuff might not fit meanwhile the head of the v-tree anyway

19:44

but at any rate, what's that Gales Linux exactly and how/in what way different from Cuntoo? where/what are your problems there?

19:45

ok, well there's hardware which so far has involved a Coreboot build & flashing process for a specific model of older Thinkpad - starting with laptops for shipping cost / portability reasons but want to grow to desktops/servers

19:46

jfw: do you have certainty re supply there esp since older model?

19:47

Gales Linux is a new distribution, not using Portage or other sort of auto-download and dependency resolution; it's got a set of package build scripts I've developed over time based on my own needs

19:48

It has a cross-bootstrap procedure, somewhat inspired by the Linux From Scratch recipe, so its initial install media can be produced entirely from source given some existing unix-like system

19:49

jfw: what did you start with? and when you say a set of package build scripts, does this literally mean you have a set of sources + scripts to build them or what?

19:50

Yes, sources consist of upstream tarballs stored on a mirror, with their hashes, build scripts and patches stored in a tree

19:52

There's some lightweight infrastructure for the common tasks of checking hashes and constructing built packages (it uses staged installation, ala RPM, producing package files that one could reuse if desired, rather than, say, 'make install'ing directly to /)

19:53

Also the filesystem layout is a bit unique, with packages stored in separate versioned subdirectories, somewhat inspired by DJB's /package scheme. Combined with static linking this makes it quite possible to install multiple versions of both binaries and libraries in parallel

19:55

There's a minimal 'init' program and DJB's daemontools are used for process supervision

19:55

hm

19:56

Drawing from OpenBSD, config files are installed to /etc/examples by default so the owner's changes are never overwritten by upgrades

19:56

well, what upgrades, lolz

19:57

jfw: out of pure curiosity now: do you find yourself upgrading software much those days?

19:57

well, it's still mostly a C stack and I can't guarantee no bugs, in fact quite the opposite, heh

19:58

sure, but that'd be a vpatch rather than an upgrade

19:58

Not really, approach has been more 'if it turns out to be broken, shoot in head and find replacement'

19:59

this ain't always cheap tho.

19:59

writing own irc client for example; I used to use irssi but it was having, what, two critical bugs a year or something

19:59

myeah, it isn't; then again, how could it be cheap in the given context.

20:01

I have not done much in the way of integrating the system with V as I didn't find myself qualified to even know what that would look like

20:02

jfw: are you effectively limited there by your scripts ie if you find tomorrow you want a new package then you're stuck until you write the script for it?

20:02

Yes, at least as far as running it on own distro.

20:02

(re irssi and bugs in general, there is also the q of whether all their bugs apply to you but not the moment to go on that tangent right now)

20:03

ouch

20:03

One big practical limitation at the moment for example is no X11. So I still do a lot of work from a gentoo-based system

20:04

*

diana_coman looks sideways at the shiny comp with all the bells and whistles she...had to get for work on eulora client.

20:04

lolz

20:04

but hm, that does sound overall more like your own practice room to know-more-linux than anything else

20:05

How does cuntoo fare in regards to 'long tail' of packages? Is it a full capture of existing gentoo, with however many TBs of mirror, or minimal subset?

20:06

(I have built my own X11 stack before too, what a pain)

20:06

jfw: cuntoo as it stands currently is more of an initial minimal genesis + a roadmap waiting for people to get moving along it

20:07

so if one wanted to 'deploy LAMP stack' on it, would need to write the A/M/P ebuilds?

20:08

jfw: it has portage and you can point it in principle to anything you want

20:08

so basically you can use it as a clean starting point and then mess it up with anything

20:08

I'm not sure I'd call the result still cuntoo

20:08

but at least yes, it's not limited in that sense

20:11

jfw: "/cuntoo/portage is configured as the system's highest priority repository, with upstream Gentoo and the overlays demoted." - to cite from the source

20:12

the point was precisely that, namely to pin down and freeze something that one can reliably reproduce and then have as a starting point

20:13

upstream Gentoo as I'm sure has been noted is constantly churning; what works on a system built this year unlikely to quite work on one built next year, unless you capture portage tree + mirror

20:13

but, it's a start, yep.

20:13

jfw: from what you say you went a much more restricted and idiosyncratic way there, hence my above http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008876

20:13

Logged on 2019-11-05 16:10:03 diana_coman: but hm, that does sound overall more like your own practice room to know-more-linux than anything else

20:14

jfw: the minimal tree is captured ie I have installed the whole thing totally offline

20:14

and ftr that's how I want it too: OFFLINE

20:14

ffs mirros

20:14

no more mirrors, thank you.

20:16

the idea though is that the signed genesis does not yet include those offline tarballs too (though arguably it should since there's no way around it)

20:16

and moreover, as you say, X11 and anything-more-than-minimal still needs to be captured and signed and so on

20:20

I install mine entirely offline, indeed, no mechanism to do otherwise; the necessary tarballs presently weigh ~500M

20:22

jfw: is that "Gales Bitcoin Wallet" somehow relying on some Gales-specific or why the name?

20:23

a more restricted/idiosyncratic way, indeed; kind of a way to force myself to at least know what all the software I'm running is.

20:24

nope I just reused the name there - though what it does pull in is my Scheme interpreter.

20:25

huh, it's some 15 years since I last did anything with Scheme

20:25

(I'd prefer it be portable in that sense, but the Scheme specs just don't specify enough)

20:25

not that I didn't enjoy at that time but uhm, iirc it was rather limited

20:26

yes it is rather batteries-not-included

20:29

jfw: how about that irc client? could I just run it?

20:29

I first got interested in it through SICP, then by playing with 'tinyscheme' as seen in asciilifeform's 'shiva'. Found that implementation was very 'leaky' i.e. bad code could crash the interpreter, and with weird restrictions like segmented memory, but gave me the idea that it was a doable project

20:30

^ re Scheme

20:30

Yep, irc client is plain python 2.7 and no dependencies

20:30

that would be quite a nice thing tbh

20:30

well, as nice as python can be, there is that hard limit, lolz.

20:31

which limit?

20:31

jfw: python itself; it's not the cleanest thing there is, for sure

20:31

and with all the changes from one version to another, it might even not run fine on my 2.6.6 for instance

20:31

right. Know of any things that are both clean + not limited though? :D

20:32

jfw: heh, well done.

20:32

ftr, I wasn't saying that against you/your code there, lol.

20:33

IRC client has some known deficiencies but possibly not that hard to remedy them

20:34

jfw: well, I'd certainly give it a spin at least, why not.

20:34

cool, I can bump it up on the schedule

20:35

jfw: do you understand V?

20:35

and the WoT for that matter?

20:36

I've read up in various ways but found them pretty deep subjects and don't think I've got to the bottom of them

20:37

Have read v.py, and made some tweaks like hash verification, but not written own vtron

20:38

I re-read the WoT article and think I understand it better than last time you asked, I guess we'll see once I get the articles out!

20:39

jfw: certainly; it was more to have some idea where you are on that path there.

20:40

all right; I'm still around and available to chat but I covered the topics I really wanted to ask you about today so thank you.

20:41

oh, re S.NSA auction, I'm indeed considering a bid. Does one need a Eulora account or something since they're priced in ECu?

20:41

jfw: not really ie it's pegged and so the payment can still be done in BTC via deedbot

20:42

and for that matter if you'd absolutely need to pay in ecu, it wouldn't be a problem ; but atm seeing how no eulora server, it would be quite...difficult

20:42

just make sure you get the numbers right so you actually know what you're bidding there.

20:43

ah cool. Is it 10 ECu to the satoshi -> 1bn to the BTC?

20:45

one satoshi is 10 ECu, yes; as per http://trilema.com/2017/and-now-for-a-special-eulora-news-bulletin/?b=Henceforth&e=#select

20:46

ty.

20:46

jfw: btw, as far as I see it and since you say you are actually relying on FGs as part of your business, you should really look into making them yourself

20:47

it's more a matter of procurement anyway

20:47

did you consider this?

20:48

jfw: I realised I have no idea: how many people are you teaching in this batch that finishes end of Nov iirc?

20:49

I thought it would be a fun project for sure, but potentially large time suck, thus hoping to make use of what's already done at this stage. I am inexperienced with getting hardware printed and would expect delays

20:50

There are two in that batch and one working at a slower pace.

20:50

hence why you need to think of it with enough time in advance but otherwise to the extent that's crucial to your whole biz, you can't quite avoid it really.

20:51

that's not to say that you shouldn't make use of what's currently available, of course you should.

20:52

but it's buying you time simply, not more.

20:54

http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008939 - huh, this is the people or the FGs??

20:54

Logged on 2019-11-05 16:55:54 jfw: There are two in that batch and one working at a slower pace.

20:54

people, heh.

20:55

I had to read that a couple of times, lol; ok.

20:56

heh I can see it, picked up your word 'batch' right after talking hardware.

20:59

diana_coman: do you know much about mainboard debugging for BIOS work? I see that as another important thing to invest in given the limited resource of pre-fritzchips, and the Sage probe that asciilifeform wrote about as a key tool

21:00

aha; you were saying that you're quite fond of your computers and it struck as rather interesting: how's that exactly ?

21:00

jfw: sadly not much there, no; I suspect I might need to find out at some point though.

21:05

Well I've been fascinated by computers from early age; the ability to direct such remarkable machines by mere words and numbers. And then there's the practical side of all they allow one to do - read, search, chat, compute (obv!), and fit all your important stuff in a pocket with as many backups as desired.

21:06

jfw: in what way remarkable though?

21:06

what was your first computer anyway?

21:08

Billions of computations per second seems remarkable to me! Though it's just the present state of a long history of development there I suppose.

21:09

Grandpa had an old Mac (Performa I believe); first machine at home was a DOS box, could load Windows 3.1 with some effort

21:10

jfw: well, your brain does quite a lot of remarkable in that sense, doesn't it?

21:10

It does.

21:11

oh huh, no zx80, how sad.

21:11

And I'm rather fond of it too!

21:11

ahahaha, that's good to know!

21:11

born into the dark ages already huh.

21:12

eh, not like it started then or something

21:13

ftr my fondness of the zx80 clone I saw as first comp comes mainly from the fact that I literally saw it assembled piece by piece

21:13

not as much from the finished stuff as from peaking at its insides

21:14

I positively couldn't stand progrmaming too !

21:14

lolz

21:15

nice re assembly. Oh it occurs to me the earlier computers I saw, though didn't use, were dial-in terminals to an Alpha, and one Wang, at parents' work

21:15

jfw: the q re the practical side of what they allow one to do is precisely that - do they quite allow you to do all you wanted to do with them?

21:17

oh, and ftr re dark ages: the difference is not *that* big, I'm 38.

21:17

What I wanted to do with them grew, e.g. I had no idea 3D graphics were a thing to want as a kid, or cryptography. Seems that they do allow quite a bit but with big questions as to when they'll decide of their own accord not to allow what you thought they did.

21:18

when they do, shoot them!

21:18

jfw: so what do you want most to do with them?

21:19

machines have no business "allowing" anything, that's not for them.

21:23

hmm, I'm not finding a 'most want to do with them' here. I've come to see them less as about entertainment or interesting in their own right, and more, how can they serve my real-world needs

21:24

hoping I don't become entirely jaded though.

21:25

that sounds more ... adult than jaded, what.

21:26

what's wrong with real-world needs?

21:27

they are indeed tools or they are *supposed to be* tools, no?

21:28

Nothing wrong at all, indeed.

21:37

jfw: heh, just... nothing excitingly right yet?

21:44

diana_coman: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008829 << yes it would be my first build.

21:44

Logged on 2019-11-05 15:34:57 diana_coman: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008801 - whaack, would this your first build?

21:45

The Scheme interp has been the most exciting of my projects. Starting with simple and comprehensible components, like with logic chips on a breadboard, and seeing it all come to life

21:49

whaack: ah, doubly exciting then, nice; but you should start then with some reading at the very least, gather a list with all the stuff you need and so on; to make it easy re choice of "what to build", I suppose you can get and fx & corresponding board eg the config in http://ossasepia.com/2019/07/14/a-working-cuntoo-install-on-amd-fx-8350-with-script/

21:49

not like it's mandatory or "the best" or anything but as a starting point at least

21:51

jfw: sounds like you quite enjoy making stuff actually; (and yes, I get what you mean there re simple+comprehensible & seeing it come to life)

21:51

I do.

21:52

whaack: you should read the specs for each component and check compatibility; that being said, there are also some sites that can help you with that, just search around.

21:53

diana_coman: aha I was thinking of that post from when we were discussing having an os built with V. Okay, I will start with that and do my research. As for delivery it seems DHL is the company to go for here, and they do delivery-to-door here according to my landlord.

21:54

whaack: cool; make sure you get everything you need, esp the small bits eg thermal paste indeed and cables of all sorts; again, those partpicker sites can give you some idea if you don't have any otherwise since you can see there the full list.

21:58

whaack: one detail a first-time builder might miss is power supply quality; I'd suggest not skimping there to avoid problems down the road. Also higher quality fans are a boon if you don't fancy it sounding like a vacuum cleaner

21:59

^^^ good points.

21:59

jfw: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1008839 << This is a good question to think about. I guess the overarching goal i'm optimizing for is "productivity". So I would say I need my computer to keep up with my actions i real time and then from there reliability is more important

21:59

Logged on 2019-11-05 15:43:51 jfw: whaack, I'm not aware of the original context of the desktop-building thread but one question to consider is what to optimize it for - performance, reliability, 'purity'

22:00

whaack: the trouble there is that it depends on what you are going to do exactly on it

22:00

so unless you know that already...

22:00

aye, if 'running windows' is in there, no computer will ever keep up for long

22:00

ahahaha, why so mean jfw

22:00

S#1063 O=1 LB=10mn E=2019-11-12 15:43:00.630180 (155h42) >>> selling items 1, 2 and 4 through 7 on http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bones/snsa_1_nov_2019.txt ; buyer to take possession at his own expense.

22:00

--- end of auction list, 10mn total bids ---

22:00

experience.

22:01

jfw: lol . gotta dual boot so i can play wow

22:01

tsk

22:01

he meant eulora!!

22:01

you know, dorion should play eulora the most actually

22:02

but a state of sadness indeed, sigh.

22:03

*

diana_coman will be back tomorrow

22:07

whaack: if running Windows then 'purity' is probably not worth it and just buy the fastest stuff that fits your budget. For reliability, a RAID card and ECC memory might be worth considering; I haven't used these before for my home builds but have realized the error of my ways.

22:09

(though an addendum re 'fastest stuff', some care is required if you want it to work well on Linux too especially GPU)

22:09

*

jfw will bbl

22:13

jfw: heh man i can't tell did you think i was serious re dual boot? no, i currently plan to run cuntoo. i am curious though, what hardware items make a computer more pure?

22:19

whaack corebootable is high on priorities for purity, and moreso than coreboot in 'purism' sense. they claim 'pure' while running i7 intels.

22:20

jfw: performance is not particularly important to me, but i also don't plan to be particularly frugal. the specs here look good, and I may invest in a half decent graphics card as well

22:25

dorion: just looked up puri.sm . from their website they look like the protonmail of hardware

22:25

or the keybase.io of hardware, if you will

22:34

whaack ayup, for those who 'just want to' have it since and shiny.

22:37

http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-05#1009005 << I'm game! Though never a videogamer myself, I've gather Eulora isn't like any other game -- how you play is how you think, cause the a) bot-friendliness and b) auctions, not how you mash the board and mangle your hands.

22:37

Logged on 2019-11-05 18:06:58 diana_coman: you know, dorion should play eulora the most actually

22:39

and on the mangled hands thread, I have a link that may help mats ; diana_coman ought I add it here or reply to the thread it #t ?

22:39

*

dorion bbl:junto

22:39