Why have Apple and Windows OS upgrades become :

- "You get two new emoticons"
- "You can now make gifs"
- "The mouse pointer is pointier"
- "You can subscribe to get a spell checker"
- "You can ask an AI to do all the above"

Is this list really that much more interesting to people compared to actual OS changes ? Is there some conspiracy to move to a continuous upgrade model by downplaying all core OS upgrades to theme and emoticons ?

I honestly ask because there is literally nothing on mainsteam news sites that can be considered technical excellence.

I have not checked myself into API, ABI, BUS/Memory/Process Management changes as my point is that those parts seem to be completely unmentioned, and this clear focus on things that don't matter is baffling.

https://status.cloud.google.com/incidents/ow5i3PPK96RduMcb1SsW

How to say that you phased rolled out untested, null pointer exception causing codebase, in a vital and global policy system that has also obviously never been benchmarked for time to full recovery - the initial updates had no ETA even though the root cause was apparently known from the first 10 mins - in 5 paragraphs.

And the scary part ? no mention of violations of any coding practices and code reviews, nothing to base a policy system on policy schemata or versions, nor unit tests that would have stopped a phased rollout.

For some reason they picked to announce static analysis improvements ( to avoid null pointer exceptions ), mandatory feature flags ( in order to not have to wait 20-30 minutes for CI/CD ) and modularization ( blast radius control ), which should have been the baseline anyway, no process changes.

Very embarrassing, I hope whoever decided to remove guardrails and took actions to eventually effectively nullify the phased roll out process, presses on the brakes and starts realizing that they need to push for the stability/credibility currency increase once again...

"Successful null release"

#gcp #gcpdown

TIL that GRUB will freeze if "sysrq" seq is being spammed...

due to some mishandling liquids in a glass based chain of events, my keyboard's ( matt3o's Whitefox - Nightfox Edition ) Alt and Print-screen buttons got stuck, which blocked me from booting my main PC until I disconnected it.

oh well, you live and learn....

Had some fun fixing a Sony #Minidisk MZ-R70. Apparently it got damaged internally and someone tried to repair the "leg" that keeps the main cartridge holder connected to the door with medical tape.

Unfortunately this seized the door closed but also didn't fix the real issue, which was that the door closed button sensor was not anymore pressed due to the damaged piece missing, keeping the device in a perpetual off state..

I removed the tape + cleaned up, fixed the bends on the magnetic head and bypassed the sensor to bring the MD back to life, works for reading MDs but need to test recording.

Seems like it had a long life and was used a lot, structural fatigue on the corners and the battery holder clips are making it flimsy to open/close + the battery pops out sometimes, but hey, why should I complain ? i can fix those later, it is a working Minidisk 🙂

Finally had some time to clean up and upload my code for the Micropython + rp2040 Super Famicom/ SNES cartridge reader 😇

https://codeberg.org/xsk/sfc-cartridge-pico

Even though it might not be a problem you have, it definitely worth checking the optimizations micropython can do in order to make things run fast.

Definitely learned a lot, and I can use these learnings on the ZXSpectrum ULA Project 😈

#micropython #supernes #rp2040

I was today years old when I realized I can position the 1 in hexadecimal by dividing the binary power by 4...

e.g a 1 in the 16th position in binary means a 1 on the 4th in Hex ( counting from power 0 )...

all the pieces were there but they never connected until now, and that's a nice mental shortcut 🙂