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benjaminwai | 2 years ago | on: Base64 Encoding, Explained

Just a note with the Bash encoding method. It should be with the -n option:

  $ echo -n "abcde" |base64
Otherwise, without the -n, echo injects an extra newline character to the end of the string that would become encoded.

benjaminwai | 3 years ago | on: Widespread internet outages in the UK: Virgin Media

"Others still have reported that the internet outage could be circumvented by connecting through a virtual private network (VPN), giving a hint of where the wider problems lie, and suggesting that Virgin Media’s outage, like that at Facebook in 2021, may have been the result of a flaw in the deep-level routing systems that allow internet services to connect to each other."

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: We don’t use a staging environment

I think we are missing some contexts here. I have been trying to find more information about them. From what I found [1] (hopefully accurate) it looks like they are a new team - Beta in August 2021 and just incorporated in this February. The founder/CTO is a full stack developer. I speculate they are a very small team (1-2 developers at the most) and a relatively straightforward architecture. In that context I suspect it is quite feasible to go from local to production without going through staging: They are likely to have a self sustained stack that can be packaged; they don't have a huge database or collection of edge cases; they have few customers, low expectation in terms of service level; they don't have stakeholders to review and approve features done (they are their own bosses). I emphasize with where they are, I have been in the same place at some point. It will be interesting to see whether this is sustainable without staging, or for how long, as they grow in team and offering.

[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/product/squeaky

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: P&O Ferries sparks outrage by sacking 800 workers

To put it in context, P&O Ferries has always been UK based and flagged until it's sold to a Dubai owner in 2006 and it's reflagged to Cyprus early 2019. That opened up the opportunity for this to happen.

All the routes are contracted by the UK government. I'd say the government should have reviewed the contracts back in 2019 and done something to ensure the UK based staff are protected. But as we have observed the last few years the government has been rather distracted and incompetence at the same time. And now the horse has bolted.

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on board

Can the reversers be opened independently on left and right side? From some of the 3D plots on various threads it looks like the plane took a sharp left before diving. Could it be the left reverser malfunctioned or be accidently opened mid flight causing the plane to swirl left and lose the aerodynamic?

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: Novak Djokovic's Visa Cancelled by Australian Minister for Immigration

I had a suspicion that the Tennis Australia and Victoria State Government did not want to take on the publicity battle and kicked the ball down to the Federal government. The person issuing the Visa at the Fed level either lapsed in reviewing or also decided to kick the ball down the road, which was to the Border Force. The Border Force had no choice but to act on it but messed up on the procedure. It's all bureaucratic or am I way off in thinking?

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: YK22 bug causing Honda clocks to stop working

I kind of sympathize the engineer who had to code this in the first place years ago. I could see it, it was probably a junior person being thrown into it. He would have had to deal with non-standard components, incompatible packages and limited memory, and had a manager breathing down his neck because the manufacturing line was starting up.. He's probably looking up at the clock and thinking that it had enough bits for the foreseeable future.

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

Can language be delinked from culture? Maybe. But can a language survive without a culture to encompass it? If you strip culture from a language, wouldn't the language would become toneless and meaningless? Yes, you can call something a 'net' or a 'fish' at a basic level. However in one culture one might say, "You must cast your net to catch the fish" it's plain what it means and it is meaningful, but for someone without the cultural context, it's a head scratcher and may wonder what fish are you talking about?

I'm too, my native language isn't the one I am writing here. I have lived in quite a few different places. Culture is not something I could make up for myself as I go along, I don't think anyone could do so in isolation. I took in the different bits of cultures that i have experienced through, sometimes to the dismay of those around me. I appreciate the perspective that cultures create languages, and without the cultural reference the language would cease its importance and would die.

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: AWS Private 5G

I wonder how do they link back to the main network? Would it require a fiber backbone in place as a prerequisite? Or through satellite uplink? i.e., would somewhere really remote, say, the oil rig in the North Sea, be out of luck for such installation?

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: An UPDATE without a WHERE, or something close to it

I think !$ takes the last argument on the previous command in history, not previous one on the same line.. at least in bash. For example, if you do:

  $ ls /
  $ ls /tmp/junk; rm !$
It's taking "/" rather than "/tmp/junk"..

EDIT: formatting

benjaminwai | 4 years ago | on: A Dyson sphere around a black hole

To me, space is not static. Black holes, as probably all objects in space, are continuously moving and rotating. I don't think gravity waves are fully understood. I doubt they would be constant for black holes. There would also be continuous ingestion of objects from afar, small or large. So with all these volatilities, how would one maintain a stable orbit to construct the sphere adjusting for tsunamis of gravity waves, bombardments by objects passing or entering the black holes, and flares of radiation escaping from the center? And what could one do to make sure the black hole stays in the center of the sphere? It's a logistical nightmare.
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