#pest | 2024-02-19

asciilifeform, since you're only other person i know reading locklin would you mind sanity checking https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/the-birthday-paradox/#comment-48703

11:42

i think he messed up his birthday paradox math, but i don't know for sure because he also doesn't seem to want to engage the point. is this some kind of profound point of "looking at math differently" that i'm missing?

11:42

ohai phf

11:42

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asciilifeform looks

11:46

phf: he did get it backwards. ( for n00bs, see e.g. )

11:48

oughta s/The probability of a group of people not sharing a birthday/The probability of a group of people sharing a birthday

11:49

what has phf been up to? ( asciilifeform pleasantly surprised to hear from subj, assumed that this time he defo went to taiga and not came back... )

11:53

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asciilifeform scratches head, wonders wai locklin not cribbed the (quite short) derivation along with the rest of it

11:57

or why denied without even cursory check, i mean i started by simply plugging numbers in formula, getting opposite result

11:57

nfi!

11:58

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asciilifeform suspects... substance abuse

11:59

i've been pretty upset about it for the past day, because i held guy in high regard. i guess it's hard to acknolwedge a mistake when it's in the middle of "most people are stupid and suck at math" rant

12:00

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asciilifeform had at various times committed similar atrocities, but did fix, and will again if finds moar

12:03

phf: imho locklin has been 'going to the dogs' for a while nao. asciilifeform not knows the fella well enuff at all to make an informed guess re why

12:03

it's not the mistake that's upsetting, of course, which otherwise would be pretty inconsequential

12:04

( beyond the obv 'you are what you eat'(tm), d00d seems to have been snarfing up epic qtys of woo )

12:04

right

12:05

well, anyway, so it goes©

12:07

to your other question, i mean we're in age of instant global communication. you can probably have starlink in a shack in taiga, or a microwave relay to closest poselok, which makes pest basically just a (load ...) away

12:09

besides it'll be tricky to ship rocky mountains which i'm partial to all the way to taiga. i guess they have their own breeds of winter hardy horse, but that's a whole lifestyle change

12:11

rocky mountains as in breed

12:15

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asciilifeform admits, not even been to rocky mountains yet

12:17

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asciilifeform not achieved anyffin worth telling people about for rather long time. instead roasted in commercial hell, where thermostat has been slowly but steadily climbing

12:19

i periodically check the logs, how mp once said "in between pornhub and reddit", so i know not much is going on on account of not much going on anywhere in general

12:20

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asciilifeform in a fit of pique, drew up schematics for one lul, then realized it was (like all of asciilifeform's builds) a deadend, shelved

12:20

Logged on 2023-12-07 22:25:45 asciilifeform[signpost|jonsykkel]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-12-07#1031498 << asciilifeform was recently considering baking an acoustic (morse. hold up to pnoje, like old autodialers) pocket otptron for point to point text.

12:20

phf: you didn't miss much imho

12:21

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awt_akris released a gui pest station

12:21

ah yes

12:22

awt, that was while i was still here, somewhere on the tail end, i believe

12:22

awt_akris

phf: ah ok thought I had released screencaps but not yet the code.

12:25

well, i bought a house, cheap because somewhat middle of nowhere, and also cash, this is not otherwise notable, except that it pushed me further in the direction of plunge routers and chimney chases

12:27

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asciilifeform spent a hilarious # of cycles on similar, complete with plunge routers, endoscopes, thermovisors, whole junkyard of various tooling 'for 1 job, but whoknows, could again'

12:28

i've kind of realized that there isn't a happening where my skills are needed, i'm anyway failing to find it and failing to create it myself, so i'm just focusing on, again to quote mp imprecisely, "tweaking their car engines in their garages or whatever it is they do"

12:28

there's an epic 'division of labour fail' in the reich, where you gotta talk to 6-7 contractors (and pay...) before find one who isn't simply trying to sell you a good % of yer house in replacement gear. so easier/cheaper with own hands

12:29

lol, i've discovered the same

12:30

out in the deplorables lands also pretty easy to find a retired something or other who's now an unlicensed general contractor, who will do a job for you and "save you some money" by doing it poorly

↖

12:30

lotsa these here in 'civilization' also

12:37

􏿽out in this direction we have "the lake" which is deep creek lake, which is where various pittsburgh and DC rich buy summer beach houses. it's a kind of local C list wealth destination. so there's also a lot of contractors that are good at doing big dollar installations. "oh you ha

12:38

􏿽ve HVAC issues, we'll replace the entire system for 40k" etc.

12:38

but there's nobody really who can be competent about their work they do in a systemic way, i dunno, run some cursory numbers before they start cutting into foundation, get an understand of what's there now and suggest incremental improvements, etc.

12:40

competency crisis means that you're talking to a contractor, after watching a handful of youtube videos, and realize that their understanding of the situation whatever it is is lesser then yours and there's no way to redeam it. kind of like scott locklin's "no i didn't make a mistake, eof"

↖

12:42

hence "1 carbide panel pilot bit for a 1/2 plunge router please"

12:52

'entire system for 40k' << 100% asciilifeform's experience with these

12:53

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/pest/2024-01-29#1032541 << i reread the referenced log, and there was no essays promised, only requested. it's a subject that's not worth exploring just to satisfy curiosity of random tourists

12:53

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signpost has gone back to renting for precisely this reason, spent too much repeatedly repairing a shitbox house.

12:58

billymg

http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2024-02-19#1032363 << and here i was thinking that was only the case here in bananistan

12:58

Logged on 2024-02-19 12:40:34 phf[jonsykkel]: competency crisis means that you're talking to a contractor, after watching a handful of youtube videos, and realize that their understanding of the situation whatever it is is lesser then yours and there's no way to redeam it. kind of like scott locklin's "no i didn't make a mistake, eof"

13:00

phf: archaological find ( not asciilifeform's ) while you were out, possibly interesting, but possibly already saw elsewhere on net

13:00

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billymg went this route on recent project, sorta works if you're standing over their shoulder the whole time, and reading/watching youtube videos on the subject in the evening

13:00

Logged on 2024-02-19 12:30:12 phf[jonsykkel]: out in the deplorables lands also pretty easy to find a retired something or other who's now an unlicensed general contractor, who will do a job for you and "save you some money" by doing it poorly

13:04

asciilifeform, yeah i actually saw it in logs, but i don't want to spend bandwidth on it. i have enough projects for my avocation

13:09

i actually have the entire genera source, encumbered by handshakes and promises. i've been using it as my "serious business" machine, like i keep my accounting and important notes and such in genera. as a larp. but working with that source code is the ultimate writing into a desk

13:09

aok

13:12

so i dunno adding copy/paste to genera x window is about as productive as spelunking EURISKO, but when i do it at least i'm fully aware that i'm basically doing an equivalent of "putting on reading glasses and pulling a tome of chaucer from the shelf"

~ 24 minutes ~

13:37

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asciilifeform was unequal to the task of making genera (incl. Officially purchased dec alpha version) to the point where 'livable' i.e. 'do accounting in it'

13:39

the depressing aspect wasn't 'ohnoez payware', had 0 problem baking various commercial items in e.g. wolframism.

13:41

rather, the very peculiar relationship the corpse of bolix has with paying customers -- pay up, but still not get the seekrit stable m1 version, etc., request any info re internals, get told to suck it

13:47

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asciilifeform speculated re the reasons for this, but not knows for certain wtf, personally has only a pile of items dks was willing to sell for money + small collection of quite antique docs from various people

13:47

Logged on 2022-10-31 17:53:58 asciilifeform[6]: ( starting with mallery, who 'i bought for $mil, but Worth Billions!' -- or alternatively, per asciilifeform's hypothesis, simply happy to sit on the whole thing for nsa & co. who not eager to see even toy example of cpu-and-os-sans-overflows rise from bottom of ocean )

13:59

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asciilifeform still of the pov that 'the Right Thing' would be an iron on which it'd be conceivable to slowly rebuild sane system, incl. in the ways demonstrated by bolix, but to this day not knows any plausible way to finance such an effort

14:02