https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator#Advantages_and_disadvantages

thank you wikipedia for mentioning these are not suitable for cryptographic usage 2/3rds of the way down the page

Take a nap if you need to. Set a timer.

Speaking of mass unemployment;

"The Government has introduced the Social Security (Modernisation) Amendment Bill 2026. This Bill will help us modernise some of our processes by expanding the use of automated decision-making."

https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/about-work-and-income/news/modernising-our-processes

That's worrying. But ...

"It is not generative AI. Generative AI is the type of technology used in tools like ChatGPT and Claude."

Ok, good. But that could be next. Besides, automation can't be trusted with key decisions about people's lives.

It echoes my strange turn to microcontrollers🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeX22LnKdFY

@jpm yeah but power stuff is boring to me, it's a means to an end. I usually pick a few parts i like then stick with them unless i have oddball requirements

@CymboliO There are important differences of course but yes there are parallels.

@strypey @videolan How about Looper player?

https://github.com/SthrNilshaaa/looper

@azonenberg TI. Every week a new voltage regulator.

Remember the original "Star Trek" episode "The Corbomite Maneuver"? That entire massive ship -- The Fesarius -- vastly dwarfing the Enterprise, was operated by one entity -- Balok. That's how long-term jobs at date centers work. A handful of people run the entire ship. Real job growth in a community: Nonexistent.

it might be worth going over some basic facts and misconceptions while we're sharpening our pitchforks

RE: https://neuromatch.social/@HeliosPi/117136481970426657

I like the learning philosophy described here. I'd summarize it this way:

• If you want to learn something like martial arts, you need to be able to be calm in class, because being stressed makes learning harder, and the way the instructor runs the class has a huge impact on that.
• It helps a ton to be able to experience the class as play, as a fun time, and especially not as something that will trigger trauma responses in you or your fellow students.
• And finally it's key to recognize those fellow students as your partners in learning, not as competitors or opponents, but as people you want to help and who want to help you.

These points are key parts of why I've been enjoying the aikido class I've been in for the last year (and recently successfully tested for my first rank!), but I think lots of training can benefit from the same principles.

thanks for the keyboard tips all, I think the keycap is just broken. 😞 (There is another key that is exactly the same size and the keycap fits onto the Tab switch fine without any stabilizer or anything.) I'll see if replacement keys aren't too expensive. ⌨️

@lauren Similar to what happens with oil wells in the oil & gas industry.

this is too hard. i'm gonna learn about pseudorandom generator functions

My current theory is that feeling pain/annoyance is an integral part of the software engineering process.

Hear me out: when your architecture is starting to fail you, the cost of change goes up. That's painful for developers, who will hopefully be given the time to address this (or sneak these changes in alongside other work). Clankers don't care. Whether it's a couple of lines in a few files or a massive change across the entire codebase, it's all the same to them: tokens in, tokens out.

i suppose it probably is kind of nice to be able to store a very large file in smaller chunks............or to support appends even if they get normalized into a contiguous representation later