Twitter: @ewenmcneill -- July 2022

Thu Jun 30 20:40:01 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @kawaiiconNZ: Signal feed established on Twitter and YouTube: https://youtu.be/4hBLf2vQc8k

T-1 and counting 🚀

Fri Jul 01 00:52:56 +0000 2022 (#)

Very much appreciating the live stream #kawaiicon (and it’s been a great selection of talks so far)

✨💖✨ https://twitter.com/kawaiiconNZ/status/1542600442739556352

Fri Jul 01 02:20:39 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @Yash25571056: According to a systematic review on the COVID-19 survivors, "Seventy-nine percent of COVID-19 survivors at 1 months and…

Fri Jul 01 02:23:25 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @RealSexyCyborg: I mean if the smartest people you know get caught up in the whole social/economic pressure of being unmasked at times-…

Fri Jul 01 07:00:29 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @drjulie_b: So when asked for the scientific basis of their decisions around RAT test advice, @minhealthnz replies with mostly citations…

Fri Jul 01 08:52:05 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @Zeptobars: Which microchip protects the most property and human life? Automotive? Healthcare? I think this one could be the winner. DW0…

Fri Jul 01 21:57:49 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @kawaiiconNZ: Signal feed re-established for day 2: https://youtu.be/IyeDSyvYvZs

Sat Jul 02 00:30:47 +0000 2022 (#)

Fascinating (and encouraging) talk at #kawaiiconNZ by Patrick Hindmarsh about the rapid development of the NZ Covid Tracer app in 2020 (~2 weeks total from “decision to build” to “in production across NZ”).

Thanks for including the talk #kawaiicon2!

#kawaiicon

Sat Jul 02 01:34:45 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @andrewtychen: One of the unsung heroes of our response, @phindmarsh: the architect behind NZ COVID Tracer. His team had to make a LOT o…

Sat Jul 02 01:37:49 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @andrewtychen

FTR for those that may not know the context: Patrick’s talk was submitted a year ago, for a conference that was going to be in late 2021… which got delayed by Covid. (As best I can tell from the timeline, Patrick was at MoH for ~2 years — ie a pretty typical IT job length.)

Sat Jul 02 01:51:55 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @andrewtychen: So if Kawaiicon can get 1500+ people through vaccine pass and ID checks (including having up-to-date passes) amongst a co…

Sat Jul 02 01:54:41 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @jpdanner: We used to think we were underground hackers! @Metlstorm

#kawaiicon #kawaiiconnz @kawaiiconNZ

Mon Jul 04 01:44:44 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @minxdragon

Yes, this ⬆️.

I’m very “I’m not even sure gender is a useful categorisation category, why is everyone so obsessed with it” these days.

(Unfortunately marketing people imagine gender is more meaningful to them than, eg, star sign, so I don’t see the obsession stopping soon 😢)

Mon Jul 04 01:44:52 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @minxdragon: But, on the other hand, I think our society is entirely too fixated on gender and needs to stop. Everything is about gender…

Mon Jul 04 02:13:15 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @aurynn

Covid-19 spread at the conference?

So far I’ve only heard 1 positive case by lunchtime Friday, and “a few” by lunchtime Saturday. Which is (a) too soon to be conference spread, and (b) below NZ population case percentages (ie ~5 in 1500 is about .33% versus NZ at about 0.5-1%).

Mon Jul 04 06:26:11 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @BR3NDA, @__fincham, @plambrechtsen, @pepperraccoon, @kawaiiconNZ and @puck_

I too am curious if there was spread at the conference itself, as the conference itself seems to have been extremely cautiously run.

So far all cases I’ve heard about could have arrived with Covid-19, then tested positive once RAT could pick it up (1-2 days after symptoms).

Mon Jul 04 06:29:07 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @BR3NDA, @__fincham, @plambrechtsen, @pepperraccoon, @kawaiiconNZ and @puck_

I’d also expect Bluetooth pings from the conference could just be delayed uploads from early (eg Friday morning) “arrived at conference with unknown Covid-19 then found out at conference” cases.

I’d call it a win if conf case percentage is less than/same as NZ case percentage 🤔

Mon Jul 04 06:37:39 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @Dram_Of_Sleep

FWIW there were announcements (Fri/Sat) that a few people at Kawaiicon had tested positive (likely arrived not knowing they had it).

Monday seems extremely likely to be “MoH gave them Bluetooth data upload code” day.

Hopefully masks/ventilation/positive cases leaving worked.

Mon Jul 04 06:42:39 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham, @BR3NDA, @plambrechtsen and @puck_

Interestingly the NZNOG conference seems to have gotten away with it, at least based on not hearing of any Covid-19 cases linked to/after it. Despite… inconsistent mask use (and no enforcement), and inadequate ventilation. (Much smaller though: ~150 people.)

Mon Jul 04 07:09:08 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @puck_

Yeah, I ended up only going to half a tutorial of NZNOG in person, then deciding the risk was unnecessarily high and watching the remainder of the talks via live stream. (I’d expected more precautions based on original NZNOG announcements than happened in practice.)

Mon Jul 04 07:27:09 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

The right most box (of 5) is Orientgene; the “20 pack” is Healgen. Despite their labelling (I have both in my house.)

AFAICT Healgen / Orientgene are the same except for the length of the swab stick/disposal bag, and the instructions. (Seem to be grouped together in studies.)

Mon Jul 04 07:29:43 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

Also FWIW the “20 pack” is “we ship 20 singles together to you at once”.

And 4 * $29.99 is $119.96. So 3 cents less than $199.99. Feels like a “marketing rounding” only difference to me… 🤔

Mon Jul 04 09:54:35 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

I’d be interested to know what you think of the Dentec masks when they arrive. They seem to be highly recommended, but I couldn’t easily find a source shipping to NZ and the style seemed “visually bulky”. (So I ordered the GVS one first, which I’ve ended up not using regularly.)

Tue Jul 05 00:26:26 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @kawaiiconNZ: Mōrena, we've been made aware of a few attendees testing +ve for COVID. Please ensure you are being responsible, test if y…

Thu Jul 07 01:21:33 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

I haven’t done much with my precursor device yet beyond updating its firmware a few times (they’re close to a 1.0, but the factory shipped version was a 0.9x).

(Sorry I don’t think I want to sell mine. IIRC they’re expecting more parts late 2022 for another production run.)

Thu Jul 07 01:22:43 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Beware the screen on the precursor is optimized for “can review electronics” and is not particularly readable. (And later firmware changed to a tiny font which makes readability even harder.)

Thu Jul 07 01:29:20 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Yes it’s a LCD, and I think a memory LCD (for display hold while the rest is powered down).

There’s a backlight you can turn on, which helps a bit, but it’s still very “1990s LCD” like in readability. (Chosen for simplicity, not “compete with iPhone display”)

Thu Jul 07 01:33:45 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

I’m fairly sure I’ve heard which LCD it is. But I’m not finding a written document, so maybe it was part of one of the early 2020s talks about the precursor hardware? (LCA2020 talk as mostly software, CCC 2020 was mostly hardware.)

Thu Jul 07 04:52:10 +0000 2022 (#)

Random #Covid19NZ observation: supermarkets seem to once again be out/almost out of the “good” paracetamol (ie well recognised brands). Just like Feb/Mar 2022, when NZ decided to let Covid-19 run free.

(Stocking was low but there the last couple of months, in between.)

Thu Jul 07 05:27:36 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @kawaiiconNZ

Do y’all have a rough idea of how many attendees have subsequently tested positive?

I’m directly aware of 3 attendees testing positive Mon/Tue/Wed which seem linked. (Plus the “one” and “a few” during Con, who presumably caught it immediately pre-con and found out at Con.)

Thu Jul 07 06:52:09 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman and @kawaiiconNZ

Yes, I’m expecting that most of the cases will correlate with “dinner/drinks” type social events.

Given NZ’s current “reporting positive” rates I’m guessing NZ is at “about 1% of country per week”. So anything under 1% (~15 out of 1500) seems like “con practices reduced risk”.

Thu Jul 07 10:01:34 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @RealSexyCyborg: All metal version of the Buterin-Wu Upper Room UVGI Fixture. This is an air sanitizing device designed for local manufa…

Fri Jul 08 02:30:58 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @NewsroomNZ: Experts are concerned that the Ministry of Health's internal and public health advice isn't aligned with the latest science…

Fri Jul 08 02:36:50 +0000 2022 (#)

TIL that the NZ MoH were concerned people would become complacent about #NZCovid19 if encouraged to wear good masks (P2, N95, etc).

Fortunately that didn’t happen.

Instead people became complacent (and 1500+ died) because of the MoH/government “she’ll be right, mate” attitude. https://twitter.com/NewsroomNZ/status/1545194510153654274

Sun Jul 10 21:31:05 +0000 2022 (#)

TIL there’s a fairly direct design influence from the Datapoint 2200 (very early desktop computer) to the Intel 8008, and then on into the Intel 8080 / Zilog Z80, and then on into the Intel 8086 / 8088. And then into 40 years of PC Intel/AMD CPUs 😮

https://bread80.com/2022/07/09/comparing-datapoint-2200-8008-8080-and-z80-instruction-sets/

Sun Jul 10 21:35:25 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

The Datapoint 2200 was an early 1970s design. So we’re talking a 50 year lineage of CPU design influence here. Give or take some byte code ordering changes (8080 to 8086), it’s basically 50 years of “extensions” being added, repeatedly, to the same base. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200

Mon Jul 11 07:09:24 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @farmgeek: If we are serious about adapting to life with Covid - and not just by pretending it doesn't exist - changing our approach to…

Mon Jul 11 07:16:25 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @TRyanGregory: A reminder:

• COVID is airborne.
• Herd immunity did not happen.
• Omicron was not mild.
• Kids do get sick.
• Transmiss…

Mon Jul 11 07:19:23 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @hroethgar

Men with beards cause ‘indecent thoughts’ in other men too, because they don’t look like women.

Possibly that’s better somehow? 🤔

Mon Jul 11 21:36:40 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

The problem in 2Q 2020 was the Government was making up new restrictions by the day, including dramatic reductions on who could visit anything in person.

So a pause in “routine operations” for Level 4 made sense.

“Until after the pandemic” not so much 😃

Mon Jul 11 21:37:30 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @nzgizmoguy and @__fincham

I mean y’all wouldn’t be the first to declare the pandemic over… :-)

Mon Jul 11 21:42:47 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

If it’s hardware RAID, that’s the RAID card’s problem.

If it’s, eg, Linux MD, then RAID 1 with one of the more recent MD RAID set types that puts the RAID metadata at the end of the partition seems to work. (EFI partition is always separate due to file system required.)

Mon Jul 11 21:58:38 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Now I check it turns out the first two MD RAID metadata formats are at the end of the partition; the newest ones are at/near the start.

But if you pick the right one (1.0 from a quick glance) the rest of the partition looks normal” to anything else. https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_superblock_formats

Tue Jul 12 00:11:55 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

I think the new style MD RAID metadata is better for most use cases (eg can store resync bitmap).

But for the tiny /boot and EFI partitions I use the 1.0 (end of partition metadata) for convenience. Because 1GB doesn’t take long to resync anyway :-)

Tue Jul 12 00:37:04 +0000 2022 (#)

😢

What if I told you the air inside the bus was more polluted (in ways that matter to humans) in NZ, than the air outside the buses? 🤔

Prediction: We’re going to have 5+ years of arguing about the need for better indoor air treatment. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/470758/cost-concerns-scupper-fresh-air-plans-for-auckland-buses

Tue Jul 12 00:39:29 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

And FWIW buses drawing in outside air from up high, not directly at the front, ought to bring in very little vehicle exhaust.

(I guess one bonus of the 20 year switchover to electric vehicles is “outside air is polluted” will reduce as an excuse not to bring in fresh air.)

Tue Jul 12 06:13:00 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Caps lock as Alt? Or even the “windows” key as a Super or Hyper or similar? 🤔

(I too find switching between macOS and Linux keybindings a bit jarring. Especially ctrl-shift-C/V in terminals.)

Tue Jul 12 22:43:41 +0000 2022 (#)

Well that’s disappointing: @ContactEnergy are now sending out unsolicited marketing emails, with no visible unsubscribe link, to addresses that explicitly opted out of all their junk email (on signup and again later). In breach of their own Privacy Policy, and NZ law.

Tue Jul 12 22:48:21 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Apparently (according to the email auto-reply when I complained) I’m supposed to join Facebook (or WhatsApp, owned by Facebook) to communicate with Contact. Yeah, nah.

Maybe they could just keep their unsolicited/unwanted marketing to FaceBook/WhatsApp instead.

Wed Jul 13 02:01:24 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @RealSexyCyborg: "Encouraging" businesses to spend money on ventilation will work about as well as "encouraging" masks has. Health codes…

Thu Jul 14 07:04:03 +0000 2022 (#)

🧵⬆️⬇️ speaking truth to power (in this case Engineers (tm))

Naomi has single handedly done more to advance the practice of practical UV air treatment than anyone else I know of. On a budget scraped together from scraps.

(A+ cultural reference too, in her third language.) https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1547461068301037570

Thu Jul 14 07:04:14 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @RealSexyCyborg: I'm going through the Chinese Far-UVC patents with a Chinese IP lawyer seeing which we have wiggle room on, I'm on WeCh…

Fri Jul 15 05:39:14 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @IanColdwater

Alternatively there are several “ear saver” designs that will take “over ear” mask straps and connect them behind the head, over significant amounts of hair. (Random examples chosen by hair of model shown.) https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4588608 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4266319 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4348611

Sat Jul 16 02:14:45 +0000 2022 (#)

“Building a haptic input knob from scratch”

It’s a very clever design, unfortunately currently around a custom motor design (with hollow inner core) that is no longer available. (They’re trying to find an alternative motor.) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q76dMggUH1M https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob/

Sat Jul 16 08:00:38 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @nickzoic

Possibly. I’m not sure I’ve seen a “pcb motor”, to know how it’s constructed.

The key requirement here is to have an empty centre of the motor through which to pass cables from bottom to top, so they don’t get twisted (without needing a slip ring).

Sat Jul 16 09:13:02 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @nickzoic

That definitely looks similar to the motor design they were using. Theirs had a bearing at the centre, and a hole in the permanent magnet rotor as well. But the flat ring of coils seems like the same design idea.

Thanks for the picture, I’d not seen those motors before.

Mon Jul 18 03:40:35 +0000 2022 (#)

TIL that Ansible does its own “split on spaces” parsing of variables on the ansible-playbook command line, instead of just insisting one variable per “-e” flag.

So you have to protect spaces in variables twice: from the shell and Ansible 🤦🏻‍♂️ https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_variables.html#defining-variables-at-runtime

Mon Jul 18 04:06:49 +0000 2022 (#)

Bonus points to Dell for attempting to PGP sign their Dell Networking OS10 release.

It would however be somewhat more convincing if the key they used hadn’t expired 2 days after the signature… :-) https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?search=0x47CB9029&fingerprint=on&op=index

Tue Jul 19 06:54:21 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @RealSexyCyborg: Public health cannot be managed on the basis of individual choice so is by definition a medical dictatorship, yes. Whe…

Wed Jul 20 04:18:16 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @farmgeek: Our Omicron wave in March resulted in more than a million reported Covid cases. The BA4/5 wave we are seeing now - four month…

Wed Jul 20 04:24:03 +0000 2022 (#)

Good🧵⬆️⬇️

The “three waves” in NZ this year (2022) have all smeared into one 6+ month ongoing wave AFAICT. We’ve never dropped below about 40k-50k recorded #NZCovid19 cases per week (which is ~1% of population per week); now back up to 60k-70k per week. 1/ https://twitter.com/farmgeek/status/1549601385045688322

Wed Jul 20 04:26:10 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Since NZ has removed basically all #NZCovid19 precautions which allowed 2020 and 2021 NZ to be safer than a lot of the world, and not implemented any new precautions (eg indoor air treatment), we’re now getting new variants in real time, before finishing the old variants 😢 2/2

Wed Jul 20 23:41:38 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Additional Ansible Network Device Configuration surprise: at least some of the DEVICE_config modules fetch the entire running config for every single task step. Which is…. slooooowwww.

(They appear to get all of it even when given a parent section 😢) https://github.com/ansible-collections/dellemc.os10/blob/master/docs/dellemc.os10.os10_config_module.rst

Wed Jul 20 23:45:41 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

With some care one can avoid a lot of this “gather facts (ie config) every step” slowness by running DEVICE_facts early on and then passing in:

config: “{{ansible_net_config}}”

(Beware change generation is against stale cached config, so you have to know no relevant changes.)

Thu Jul 21 03:15:10 +0000 2022 (#)

TIL that Dell Networking OS10 (Snnnn switches) considers “,” (ie a comma) to be a special special character in interface descriptions. You have to quote it and escape it with two backslashes on input 😮

Otherwise CA_STATUS_ERROR or silent truncation 🤦🏻‍♂️ https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-nz/dell-emc-smartfabric-os10/smartfabric-os-user-guide-10-5-4/description-(interface)?guid=guid-f4caecbb-ca4a-4e54-95fe-932b81c18d5e&lang=en-us

Thu Jul 21 03:18:55 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Is the interface description with an embedded comma (,) displayed with double backslashes? No of course it isn’t 😔

I don’t think I want to know how broken the config store is that a quoted comma breaks the input parsing, to need escaping twice 😬

Thu Jul 21 23:59:15 +0000 2022 (#)

Something tells me that this web page load could be faster… 🤔

Weirdly it seems to be around 1 minute wait per page of manual from this Enterprise IT Infrastructure vendor, but every component in the page loads in milliseconds once transfer starts.

Per page 😢

Fri Jul 22 00:45:51 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @farmgeek: In case anyone has forgotten: Dr Wiles has literally helped save thousands of lives worldwide through her Covid science commu…

Fri Jul 22 00:48:02 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @hroethgar

I just admit I’ve started wondering I’d there’s an IBM 360 frantically scrubbing through magtape to find the relevant page content… 😃

Fri Jul 22 07:26:01 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @xssfox

“Normal people” using computers are more accepting of “I guess it doesn’t work”, and give up much sooner. It’s probably less stressful that way 🤔

(The rest of the thread looks very SNAFU 😔)

Fri Jul 22 09:32:39 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @slyall: Video of presentation by @DrDreHistorian at Auckland Library earlier this month is now up. Would recommend and checkout his boo…

Sun Jul 24 02:49:37 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @atoonk: Remember that giant country-wide outage by @Rogers Canada a few weeks back? Rogers has now released some more insights into wh…

Mon Jul 25 06:08:41 +0000 2022 (#)

Oh good, switch model S from vendor D defaults 25GBase-LR interfaces FEC to CL108-RS (good), but switch model N from vendor D defaults 25GBase-LR interfaces FEC to “FEC disabled” 😔

Much testing, very interop.

(Forcing speed, duplex, and FEC on model N brings the link up.)

Mon Jul 25 10:12:12 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ExcitedLeigh

Yeah, it’s gestures at the world not great, for lots of people 😢

My suggestion, in the short term, would be to try to find a “regular thing” per day (evening) you can do with others. Maybe 90%+ online for now. So there’s always “another thing coming soon”.

Mon Jul 25 10:15:17 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ExcitedLeigh

Because my past experience is that one thing a month or even one thing a week isn’t enough to “pay back the loneliness debt”… and trying to make it be enough just increases the “post event drop”.

(Eventually 1 thing per day will probably be too much; that’s a good problem.)

Tue Jul 26 01:00:32 +0000 2022 (#)

Currently debugging why Ansible is returning the running config of the exactly one switch as an err rather than stdout. There’s some kind of exception; AFAICT never actually logged anywhere.

TIL that JSONRPC has a magic value (-32603) for “Internal Error”. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1550381638034399232

Tue Jul 26 02:31:55 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Some hours later I have my answer for why Ansible “show running config” is failing on one switch:

forward-error-correction enable-cl108

Includes the word “error” with word boundaries (here “-“).

Therefore the command “failed” 🤦🏻‍♂️ https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1551449338026803200

Tue Jul 26 02:34:25 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Unfortunately I need the line:

forward-error-correction enable-cl108

in all the N series configs (so the 25G interfaces have matching FEC and come up: the problem I started the day with 😔), so Ansible treating that config line as a fatal error is… problematic 😢

Tue Jul 26 02:56:51 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Bug report filed with vendor Ansible collection. I doubt they’ll fix it (there are year old trivial, needed, PRs that are not merged).

But at least I have something to refer to in my workaround documentation. https://github.com/ansible-collections/dellemc.os6/issues/52

Tue Jul 26 03:31:09 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Unsurprisingly it turns out this is a common Ansible netcommon issue (it usually causes more obvious task failure).

One can set “ansible_terminal_stderr_re” with an override set of regexes (no re.I on the “Error” regex works here). https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/network/user_guide/network_debug_troubleshooting.html#task-failure-due-to-mismatched-error-regex-within-command-response-using-ansible-netcommon-network-cli-connection-type https://github.com/ansible-collections/dellemc.os6/issues/52#issuecomment-1194952145

Tue Jul 26 07:02:53 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @BR3NDA

1000 characters plus “bottom quoting all messages back to the Big Bang”? (That’s my pet peeve with “modern” email.)

TBH I suspect a 1000 character limit would just lead to 1/35 threads for “regular” text (not just kernel patches). Or “see attached .docx”.

Wed Jul 27 07:15:23 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman and @__fincham

Yes, I’ve seen some really good cosplay style painting onto the Dentec Safety white masks. Looks stunning when that’s done, and like a fashion piece rather than a safety piece per se.

Wed Jul 27 07:20:34 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Good news that it fits you well :-)

What’s the fit like under your chin? Eg how far back under the chin does it go?

Also how do you find “working” while wearing the mask? Especially sight lines, down below head height? (Eg does it require head tilt down, eye tilt up?)

Wed Jul 27 07:24:23 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @plambrechtsen, @__fincham and @aurynn

FWIW there are a few other very new (2022, USA) mask styles optimised especially for talking through (eg large front facing HEPA filter).

General consensus seems to be internal microphones don’t survive long in moisture of source controlled mask, FWIW.

Wed Jul 27 07:29:17 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Thanks! From those photos it looks like it goes about twice as far under the chin as the GVS Eclipse. Which is good as “barely under chin” was my biggest fit issue with the Eclipse.

(Also good news on the price: cheaper than I expected.)

Thu Jul 28 02:10:49 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

Most businesses I’ve seen tend to use, eg, corp.PUBLICDOMAIN as their internal DNS name (or their AD domain, which is often like that anyway).

I’m not sure what the use case is for “well enough run to want internal DNS, not well enough run to own any domain names”?🤔

Thu Jul 28 02:16:40 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham

For businesses multiple uses of the same “cannot be delegated” name tends to cause problems when the business merge (at least as much as the “modern” site local IP reuse).

So TBH I’d suggest businesses own at least one delegated globally unique name anyway. It’s ~$30/year.

Thu Jul 28 02:34:27 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

The older I get the more I’m astonished that the Y2K issues just got fixed, almost everywhere, in time (so we’ll that “nothing” happened in 2000).

At the time it seemed obvious this is what society would do even faced with a major problem. Now, not so much.

Thu Jul 28 06:53:34 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman and @nickzoic

😢

(Sadly, having read Collapse by Jared Diamond, I fear you are right.)

Thu Jul 28 09:42:14 +0000 2022 (#)

This talk from VCF East 2022 about reverse engineering the Commodore 128 is an amazing tale of yak shaving, constantly peppered with comments from Bil Herd (in the audience) who designed the Commodore 128.

RE: schematics, PCB, PLA, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMMiyUGEygE

Thu Jul 28 09:45:29 +0000 2022 (#)

@unnamed_show Possibly y’all would like to talk to Johan Grip who spoke at VCF East 2022 about reverse engineering the Commodore 128 (PCB, schematics, PLA back to terms then verilog, etc)?

(Also highly recommend the talk video if you haven’t watched it.) https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1552590244058648577

Thu Jul 28 22:02:26 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

Install the missed package updates from the Ubuntu old-releases mirror, then swap back to doing your “late” upgrade?

(FWIW the upgrader ought to tell you to do that, and “no help for you” is… poor UX.) https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

Thu Jul 28 22:07:33 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

Yeah old-releases (and the Debian equivalent which was first) is one of those “everybody knows” (“nobody knows”) things 😢

TBH the do-release-upgrade ought to just install the updates you missed from the current version for you before doing the rest…. 🤔

Thu Jul 28 22:18:57 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

The deletion off the main mirrors does seem a bit early to me. The “unsupported version, upgrade now” should probably be there for at least a month extra, to make upgrades easy.

IIRC Impish was “9 months” from October 2021, which is late June 2022 at earliest.

Thu Jul 28 22:26:15 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

FTR I was meaning that it should have been on the archives for “9+1” months (so 10) from release. Which means into early August in practice.

Feels like they pulled it at least a week early. (And do-release-upgrade should have worked around it being off main mirrors anyway.)

Thu Jul 28 22:31:43 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @tveastman

Disk space on mirrors is in fairly short supply (if they have more disk they mirror more distros :-) )

But yes, do-release-upgrade should magically paper over old versions being dropped from regular mirrors. “Not found, good luck to you” is terrible UX.

Fri Jul 29 01:30:05 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @mipsytipsy: I got my stairs re-carpeted this week! 💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💖

Fri Jul 29 01:56:10 +0000 2022 (#)

RT @simonw: This is kind of neat: it turns out GitHub wikis are just Git repositories, which means you can migrate the contents AND history…

Sat Jul 30 04:26:03 +0000 2022 (#)

MoH frequently adjusting the #NZCovid19 metrics reported, and the frequency of reporting them, just says to me “it’s embarrassingly bad” and that we’re now well into “optimise for the numbers reported” over “optimise for good health outcomes” 😢 https://twitter.com/farmgeek/status/1553195694709649408

Sat Jul 30 04:29:51 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @ewenmcneill

Unfortunately every country which has allowed a large portion of its population get infected with #NZCovid19, resulting in a “we didn’t expect it to be that high” number of deaths, ends up…. massaging the statistics to not look quite as bad.

Seems NZ has joined that club 😔

Sat Jul 30 05:29:47 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @__fincham and @kyhwana

Making hypochlorous acid and putting it in a spray bottle seems like the suggested approach.

QT is a Naomi Wu thread from yesterday; seems like care/testing is required when making as it’s easy to accidentally get other byproducts (including bleach). https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1553024174192439298

Sat Jul 30 23:26:18 +0000 2022 (#)

Replying to @eey0re

Yes, I expect “it’s a lot of work” explains why there’s now no weekend reporting.

But the increases in effort required to figure out whether a death is “a #NZCovid19 death” that counts is the opposite of “doing less work because the Government doesn’t care as much” :-/