donpdonp @donpdonp@mastodon.xyz

Greetings from Mazatlán, Mexico. Its a HackerBeach of one.

Its been 3 weeks so far in Guadalajara. I learn a little more Spanish every day. I'm still avoiding coworking places due to covid, so its tough to meet people. On the plus side I'm getting project work done that's been ignored for years. Also I understand what good tortilltas and good tacos are now.

There can be entire zones for a particular product. Meaning about 5 blocks of small shops, all selling eyeglasses for instance.

Guadalajara is twice the size of Seattle. A large store, even for groceries, is rare. Instead there are many many small shops. It takes a lot of wandering to stumble into what you're looking for. While the roads are up to date in Google maps, the shops are not.

Ranked Choice Voting is happing this year, in this USA presidential election - in Maine. Thats a huge deal to set a precedent for the other states. RCV gives minority parties a chance. Here's what the ballot looks like in Maine. https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/yorkRCV11-20geneleballotsample.pdf

Current status

if you live on the commandline, the weechat-matrix plugin is alright and definitely helps with the transition form irc to matrix. I just found a native (go) terminal based matrix-only client and my first impressions are very positive. https://github.com/tulir/gomuks

the usability and features of matrix have finally pushed me off irc and into the matrix as my primary messaging platform. it took a looong time and its great to have something new.

Youtube fireplace videos have gone from a quirky punchline to a competitive resource. A fireplace is highly regarded and increasingly rare as housing density goes up. These videos seem to provide genuine comfort in our increasingly VR world.

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” Arthur Rimbaud 1854-1891 France

Just look at this picture - the flag waving in the wind. A shining aluminum rocketship. The sparks from welding another panel. All against an autumn Florida sky. This is right out of Armageddon except its real. The Starship Orbiter has 3 Raptor engines and is a self-landing cargo and crew vehicle capable of orbiting and re-entry.

This livestream of the construction site for the SpaceX Starship is amazing for what it is (massive fan interest), and what it isnt (a restricted cleanroom silo).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aDOpyUmfL4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

11 lines of code for the function signature of a (presumably) complicated function. wow. #rust

https://github.com/stepancheg/grpc-rust/blob/master/grpc/src/client/mod.rs#L169

I find this video encouraging for a open-source clone of the Anki Vector with an esp32.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnVY3QrQa4k&t=41s

Storj, while open source, has a top-down enterprise-feel in how it does things. Sia is extraordinary in its free market approach, though rebuilding the blockchain seems possibly unnecessary. https://siastats.info/storage_pricing

the problem with filtering mastodon public feeds by tag is peole are terrible at tagging content in any kind of standardized way. I expect that will get better as tags become more important, which will come when databases of mastodon content by tag becomes more popular.

Its remarkably less outrage-inducing to read the text-only forms of national news sites. Also its a cool excuse to use a curses based web browser.

$ links text.npr.org

$ links lite.cnn.com

The most efficient, expressive lanauge ive ever used is the one inside jq. https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/

fans of @PINE64 be on the lookout for the Pine A64 timer patch in linux 5.1 config: SUN50I_ERRATUM_UNKNOWN1 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c950ca8c35eeb32224a63adc47e12f9e226da241

Better a few years late than never.