permalac's comments

On: Advent of Code 2025

[permalac]

Does anyone know about any good sysadmin advent?

[ahoka → permalac]

I propose Advent of Outage: just pull a random plug in the server room every day.

[tgv → ahoka]

How about something like

    while [1]; do kill -9 $((rnd * 100000)); sleep 5; end

Probably needs some external tool for the rnd function.

On a serious note, I just saw this: https://linuxupskillchallenge.org

[pona-a → tgv]

Bash has a built-in RANDOM.

  while true; do 
    kill -9 $RANDOM
    sleep 5
  done

Or to kill running running PIDs each time

  while true; do 
    rnd=$(ps -e -o pid= | shuf -n 1)
    kill -9 $rnd
    sleep 5
  done

[udev4096 → tgv]

That's hardly an "upskill" imo. You would know almost all of it by running a linux server for a month or two

[fduran → permalac]

https://sadservers.com/advent

[fduran → permalac]

I haven't set up an advent event (maybe I should) but you can do yourself a challenge a day from SadServers.com

On: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

[permalac]

Electricity bill would be huge. Great heaters tho

On: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

[permalac]

Android users will at some point next year not be able to install software unless the developer has paid and registered itsef with Google, and Google has approved the developer and the software (for an uncertain amount of time).

That is not nice.

On: FSF announces Librephone project

[permalac]

I'd like to see an android auto replacement, and them partnering with existing free phone approaches.

Two many xkcd already about creating new standards.

On: Ollama's new app

[permalac]

Vibe coding?

On: Show HN: Linux CLI tool to provide mutex locks for long running bash ops

[permalac]

Flock can be used in a single line for example for cronjobs.

Flock -s file && script.

Pretty simple. (I forgot the argument, I think is -s..

On: The probability of a hash collision (2022)

[permalac]

Honest question.

How does one write something like this?

I get the interest, and the review process. What I mean is, is this a hobby where someone is passionate about soothing, or does some employers allow people to work on side projects?

I feel my life is mostly about direct value, and I don't really understand where I went wrong in the path for meaningful knowledge.

Any philosophical help will be very welcome, as you correctly guest I'm a bit lost.

[munificent → permalac]

It sounds like you're too focused on outcome and not enough on experience.

It is a miserable life to treat everything like a chore done to earn some know, expected, concrete reward.

I suspect the author got curious, did some reading, realized they understood something, and thought it would be fun to write up the result. Likely all in their free time.

[deepsun → munificent]

I remember R. Feynman wrote that at some point in his life he reached the end of his achievements, and it was a pretty sad time. For many years he couldn't produce anything valuable anymore. So over time he gave up trying and just kept on living, doing stuff just for fun, not for value. One day he saw someone juggles a kitchen plate throwing it into the air, spinning. He got interested, why does the plate "waves" exactly twice less than rotation speed. He started computing it, just for fun. Because he was already a failure, so who cares. Over time that pointless kitchen plate computations grew up to quantum calculations, for which he much later was awarded a Nobel.

[richardwhiuk → permalac]

Almost certainly a hobby. Employer would probably want something like this on a employer blog so that they get the benefits.

[kittoes → permalac]

Unless you're supremely lucky, this kind of stuff is a hobby. One wishes that weren't the case, but capitalism is what it is...

I'd encourage you to generally ignore whether something has direct value or not because that's not how knowledge works. For example, I once spent well over a month implementing the NthWeekday function using nothing but basic arithmetic operations. This would allow us to calculate all federal holidays for a given year at runtime instead of precalculating the values and storing them in a table (which I hated, because it meant that someone had to maintain that table). This hyper-specific problem has near-zero direct value, but it was THE project that sparked my passion for maths.

On: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

[permalac]

I'll miss it dearly. I use it to sync articles to kobo, almost daily. I don't even knew they were thinking on pulling the plug. I don't know of any alternatives. I'll be happy to self host if I can sync with kobo.

On: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

[permalac]

Is kind funny when you see who is lost. I though even the most trumper had seen the light, but is clear their delusion is strong.

On: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

[permalac]

This is public knowledge. Google 'spy insider trading', and click news.