bzdev - Network

Simulation hint: in the 1980s, I wrote a simulation of a some Internet routing algorithms, with random changes to the status of the links...

Simulation hint: in the 1980s, I wrote a simulation of a some Internet routing algorithms, with random changes to the status of the links (on, off, etc.). If only because we were publishing the results, I did some tests of the random number generator we were using. The documentation claimed that all bits were usable. An FFT looked suspicious and further checking showed that the values mod N were periodic. It needed a larger state size (a minimum size was not documented).

BTW, I created the images of Putin and the baby Trump by using an editor I wrote(search for org.bzdev.epts) that makes it easy to draw paths...

BTW, I created the images of Putin and the baby Trump by using an editor I wrote
(search for org.bzdev.epts) that makes it easy to draw paths with a background image as a guide. Then I used inkscape to combine the two images and create the chain. While EPTS can create SVG fiels, its main purpose is to create paths and output those in a variety of formats, including ones that can be used directly by scripting languages, as inputs to animations or simulations.

#Musk I posted a tute a few days ago that ended with a wisecrack, "Look at what Must did to Twitter."Oddly I got an email from...

#Musk I posted a tute a few days ago that ended with a wisecrack, "Look at what Must did to Twitter."

Oddly I got an email from fosstodon saying I was mentioned by elonmusk001o@mastodon.social suggesting I sent a private message via telegram for more information but only "dedicated fans" get a response. However, no 'mention' could be found when I logged into mastodon.

Has anyone else seen this behavior - I kind of wonder if a LLM is determining who gets a canned reply that is then deleted.

#FacialRecognition As an example of how facial recognition for surveillance can be misleading, yesterday a friend and I saw a ballet in San...

#FacialRecognition As an example of how facial recognition for surveillance can be misleading, yesterday a friend and I saw a ballet in San Francisco. As we went down Grove Street - on scooters - with the War Memorial Opera House in sight, we ran into an anti-abortion demonstration and, after checking with police directing traffic, walked through the demonstration (that was the shortest path). Someone seeing us in a picture could think we were participants,.

Since today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day: a few days after he was assassinated, I went to a concert featuring Vladimir Horowitz. At the...

Since today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day: a few days after he was assassinated, I went to a concert featuring Vladimir Horowitz. At the start, Horowitz announced that he had thought of canceling the concert, but that Martin Luther King really liked music. He started the concert by playing Chopin's funeral march.

#Harris #HarrisWalz2024 I went to a fundraiser at a friend's home in September, was given a raffle ticket, and won a bottle of wine...

#Harris #HarrisWalz2024 I went to a fundraiser at a friend's home in September, was given a raffle ticket, and won a bottle of wine with a Harris/Walz label. Had a dinner for 9 people last night, so we opened it. That dinner was a good reason to despise Trump's immigrant bashing: one person from Turkey, one from Cypress, 3 from Asia, one who was born in Hong Kong but moved here when 2 years old, and 3 who were born here. Trump is going after our friends.

#Harris #Trump #Halloween With Halloween coming up, plus an election, some might find this video amusing. It was created using open-source...

#Harris #Trump #Halloween With Halloween coming up, plus an election, some might find this video amusing. It was created using open-source animation software I wrote, making use of a computation of the orbit around a black hole, with openshot used to add a soundtrack.

@EvolutionGnome Must be a bad week. Today, evolution crashed when I tried to start it on my laptop. It worked after rebooting, so my guess...

@EvolutionGnome Must be a bad week. Today, evolution crashed when I tried to start it on my laptop. It worked after rebooting, so my guess is that a server running in the background had not started or had died. If so, an error message would have been useful.

@EvolutionGnome Yesterday, Evolution stopped showing new email (IMAP gmail account) in my inbox, but would show a count of new messages....

@EvolutionGnome Yesterday, Evolution stopped showing new email (IMAP gmail account) in my inbox, but would show a count of new messages. The All Mail folder did have the new messages. Some old messages were also not visible in the inbox. Has any seen this behavior? To fix it, I saved evolution's state on a different system and used that to restore the state. Nothing else that I tried worked. This is the first time I've seen this behavior.

In a case of abject stupidity, there was a scene right out of Star Wars as the LAPD mistakenly raided a medical facility, and an officer,...

In a case of abject stupidity, there was a scene right out of Star Wars as the LAPD mistakenly raided a medical facility, and an officer, ignoring warning signs, walked into a room with an MRI machine. The "force" pulled his rifle from his hand and the rifle went flying across the room. In this case, the "force" was the electromagnetic force.

https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/lapd-cannabis-mri-raid-19789448.php

#Trump ... just read that one of Trump's websites has been "hacked", allegedly by Iran. He blames the U.S. government and...

#Trump ... just read that one of Trump's websites has been "hacked", allegedly by Iran. He blames the U.S. government and "pledged to create a safer world."

Really? If he can't manage his own website, how on earth is he going to fix a nationwide problem with website security?

I have an open-source program named gethdrs that prints HTTP headers (including redirects) as a debugging tool. I tried it on the Wall...

I have an open-source program named gethdrs that prints HTTP headers (including redirects) as a debugging tool. I tried it on the Wall Street Journal web site (www.wsj.com), and it returned a status code of 403 with a content length of 780700: over 3/4 of a megabyte for an error response!

This is not the only site behaving this way. It is a huge waste of bandwidth.

There's a lot of "no" reasons to vote for Joe Biden: no scandals, no visible infighting, no turnover, no cabinet members who...

There's a lot of "no" reasons to vote for Joe Biden: no scandals, no visible infighting, no turnover, no cabinet members who had to be fired. With that crew, if Joe wins, he could go to sleep for the next four years and we'd be fine.

It seems that on Pop!_OS (probably ubuntu, etc. as well), openjdk using the system look and feel in dark mode does not visually show the...

It seems that on Pop!_OS (probably ubuntu, etc. as well), openjdk using the system look and feel in dark mode does not visually show the keyboard focus for buttons, etc. It shows something (faintly) in light mode. This could be due to my eyesight given my age, so I'm curious if others have seen the same behavior.

Found a really good reason to *not* train LLMs on news articles. From a rag named "the Palo Alto and the Mid Peninsula Daily...

Found a really good reason to *not* train LLMs on news articles. From a rag named "the Palo Alto and the Mid Peninsula Daily Post" about a student protest where a few students were suspended: "Most student profiles were scrubbed from Stanford's website following the arrests, but the web pages were still available with a 'page not found' message." Their reporter apparently didn't know what "page not found" means. No wonder LLMs "hallucinate"!

Check out a proposed California law - https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB961/2023 - that requires an audio/visual alert if a vehicle exceeds...

Check out a proposed California law - https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB961/2023 - that requires an audio/visual alert if a vehicle exceeds the posted speed limit. A serious problem with it is that, coupled with the lack of meaningful privacy protections in the U.S., drivers may end up being dinged by their insurance companies, not for speeding but because a database is not in sync with the posted speed limits. I suspect that the author of this bill has never debugged software!

Just read that a local, family owned lumber company has been sued over its website - not ADA compliant. The owner had carefully upgraded...

Just read that a local, family owned lumber company has been sued over its website - not ADA compliant. The owner had carefully upgraded doors, bathrooms, etc. to make sure there wasn't a problem, but never thought about the website, which apparently was not accessible to visually impaired customers. If you design websites, watch out!

Cell phone question: I just got an "emergency alert" saying something about "missing" and a URL, which I ignored...

Cell phone question: I just got an "emergency alert" saying something about "missing" and a URL, which I ignored because for a real emergency, the text should be unambiguous. I went to "setting" and disabled everything. But I've done that before and something keeps re-enabling them. Has anyone else seen this behavior? I don't know if I should blame the manufacturer or my cell-phone carrier, but if I set something, I don't want it changed behind my back.

The enclosed photo is closer than most of the pictures you'll see to how the aurora appeared about 50 km south of San Francisco. It was...

The enclosed photo is closer than most of the pictures you'll see to how the aurora appeared about 50 km south of San Francisco. It was taken near the bay to get away from lights. The colors were hard to impossible to see due to limitations for color vision that do not apply to a camera.

Has anyone here used Kamatera to run Docker? I tried https://www.kamatera.com/services/docker/ and selected...

Has anyone here used Kamatera to run Docker? I tried https://www.kamatera.com/services/docker/ and selected "docker-ready-ubuntuserver-22.04 in their price calculator. It listed $4/hour for the monthly rate, and about $4/month for the hourly rate when powered on, and $6/month for the hourly rate when powered off. I sent a request for a clarification yesterday, figuring this was a website error, but haven't heard back yer.