@skybrian

97 Followers
46 Following
380 Posts
Former software engineer, now a tinkerer and accordionist. Also skybrian on Twitter and tildes.net and Bluesky.
Bloghttps://skybrian.substack.com/
Show threadskybrianMay 29

@AccordionBruce @Bumblefish @0xabad1dea @accordionnoir

I'm uncomfortable with the accordion being backwards :-)

skybrianMay 12
Rob RicciMay 11

There's a lot of stuff going around about datacenters, so I decided to do a quick tour yesterday of some of the datacenters in the Salt Lake Valley. Some are indeed quite large, but there are a bunch of smaller ones too - and they are not always where you think!

All of these are publicly known, and you can find them (and ones in your own area) at https://www.datacentermap.com/ .

Let's start with a datacenter that I go by all the time! It's across the street from my grocery store in downtown #SLC. It's listed as a colocation facility; datacenters are famously secretive about who their tenants are, but we can guess that it probably hosts servers belonging to nearby businesses, especially ones that want their storage, etc. nearby, but don't want to have to maintain a secure, cooled room. Given the number of banks that have headquarters nearby, I'd bet at least some of them are customers.

This is a fairly little guy, with apparently 16k square feet of floorspace and 1.6MW of power.

Show threadskybrianMay 12
@ricci @mjd Could this be so they don't have to go back for more permits later? (Someone thinking very long term about how much they might build someday?)
Show threadskybrianMay 8

@ifixcoinops

Now I’m wondering what kind of cheap electric generator would be a good brake. I have a lever in my accordion-shaped electronic musical instrument thing. The lever spins a wheel. I’d like it to have an electronically controlled brake to change the feel, because when you press buttons on an accordion, it opens holes and the bellows is easier to push and pull. If the brake lights up a bulb then maybe that’s even better?

skybrianMay 7

Today I ran into a minor "colored functions" issue for real and wondered what @munificent is up to lately.

(The TypeScript compiler is sync anyway, so my code doesn't need to be async.)

Show threadskybrianMar 22

@timbray

I disagree. This is like having child-proof lids on medicine. For us techies it's an inconvenience, but it serves an important purpose keeping other people safe. It's encouraging that Google wants to protect people from pig-butchering schemes, etc.

Much like it's sometimes possible to buy medicine *without* the child-proof lid, it might be nice to be able to buy a phone without it. But a 24-hour delay disabling it is not so bad, and maybe it's not worth having a separate SKU.

Show threadskybrianFeb 20
@slightlyoff Chrome has API's for these things and you can do a lot in a web app.
Show threadskybrianFeb 20

@blog.philz.dev Deno with dax is really nice though.

https://jsr.io/@david/dax

@david/dax - JSR

@david/dax on JSR: Cross-platform shell tools for Deno and Node.js inspired by zx.

JSR
skybrianFeb 13
Show threadDan LuuFeb 10

Looks like I spoke too soon about the AI not being superhuman. The current Azul world champion played against it and thinks it's better than him at higher difficulties, and a top 100 player played against it at default difficulty and thought it was better than him at default.

I should write a longer post about this. As someone who has a default of trying to have a better understanding of their project than most people would, going full vibe and understanding almost nothing was interesting.

Show threadskybrianFeb 5
@munificent Maybe it helps that I ask a lot of questions. “What if we did X? Do you see any issues?” Usually it says it’s a fine idea.