Notices by Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com), page 49

@coldacid I suppose you could also just do like... entire VM images and mount the data directories on the host, and swap those images to upgrade... Maybe that's what you had in mind. You'd need unattended migration scripts still, though. I mean, it would have be a pretty controlled environment to prevent stuff from breaking all the time.

@coldacid But the point is to get the device working right away. You should be able to put that upgrade off until later, or have it run automatically at night, etc.

Also, to keep such a device running on the long term, with up-to-date software, you're going to need migration scripts at some point, which means you can't just replace everything and restart.

I'm kind of picturing something like APT except with very conservative and robust package updates.

@coldacid Miniature rackmounts is one direction you could take it, but if one goal is to reduce people's dependence on the cloud, wife acceptance factor plays into it.

Just picture having a selection of drives pre-installed with software such as Nextcloud, Mastodon, Apache2, etc. Technically speaking the drives could just contain a basic OS image and a web installer. I think I'd prefer to have the full software even if you'd need to upgrade it immediately, though, because there are cases where downloading large amounts of software just to get a device working isn't practical.

It would be kind of neat if you could buy literal server appliances.

Something not unlike a Raspberry Pi, but with better performance and a chassis designed for stacking so you could have several connected.

It would have a slot for an M.2 stick or 2.5" SATA drive and you'd buy the drives with the software pre-installed. Bigger models would have multiple such slots and would run servers in VMs, and it would just work, with no setup required and automatic unattended updates.

When I look for devices that use MEMS microphone arrays, I mostly come across research papers, or press releases about products you can't buy yet.

I'm kind of wondering what you could do with a MEMS array in terms of pro audio. We're talking about microphones the size of a grain of rice, costing a little over a dollar each, with built-in preamps and digital outputs. That's gotta be useful for something.

@Wookhash In fact, it was at times so noisy that it made the microphones in my headset clip (distort) instead of cancelling the noise. They have never done that before. I'm willing to bet that the engineers at Bose never tested it on a small propeller aircraft. People who own Bose headphones are only supposed to fly jet aeroplanes, apparently.

@hippieNdisguise @SierraKiloBravo The documentary actually doesn't put them in a very bad light at all. It's an affectionate portrayal of the movement. Even the scientists in it don't want to dismiss them as stupid, and one of the physicists thought one of their experiments was kind of interesting. The documentary makes it seem perfectly understandable why someone would become a flat earther. It would be hard to make it more favourable without actually buying 100% into it.

Watched Behind The Curve, a documentary about flat earthers, on the flight here. It's more of a community of people who have united around a common belief than a group that wants to seek the truth. They have done several scientific experiments to prove their theory and so far, all their experiments have only been consistent with a spherical earth, so they keep on searching...

In case anyone was wondering: Yes, even in a small settlement north of the Arctic Circle, there is a 4G signal and fibreoptic Internet connectivity.

Arrival in Lakselv, my home town north of the Arctic circle. It's 23:20 and the sky isn't completely dark yet. In a few weeks, it won't be dark at night at all anymore.

Flying the final 1 hour stretch in a tiny propeller aircraft. I'm glad I have noise cancelling headphones...

I still maintain that the photo of Margaret Hamilton standing next to her pile of code printouts is better composed than the photo of Katie Bouman sitting behind a table with her hard drives in front of her. Back in the day, they used to hire these people called professional photographers who knew how to take nice pictures.

Conversation overheard at work:

Guy 1: Did you know that they don't have female crash test dummies, and that women die more often in car crashes?

Guy 2: No, but what's the difference between a short man and a tall woman?

Guy 1: Well, uh, women have, you know... *makes breast shape* Have you thought about that?

Guy 2: *deadpan* Yes. Yes, I have thought a lot about the fact that women have those.

Conversation overheard at work:

Guy 1: Did you know that they don't have female crash test dummies, and that women die more often in car crashes?

Guy 2: No, but what's the difference between a short man and a tall woman?

Guy 1: Well, uh, women have, you know... *makes breast shape* Have you thought about that?

Guy 2: *straight face* Yes. Yes, I have thought a lot about the fact that women have those.

Conversation overheard at work:

Guy 1: Did you know that they don't have female crash test dummies, and that women die more often in car crashes?

Guy 2: No, but what's the difference between a short man and a tall woman?

Guy 1: Well, uh, women have, you know... *makes breast shape* Have you thought about that?

Guy 2: *sarcastic serious face* Yes. Yes, I have thought a lot about the fact that women have those.

Waiting for the bus.

@bifpowell I've been thinking maybe I should get a Mexican Strat. I don't have big hands, so I prefer guitars with narrow, thin necks. The SG wasn't an ideal purchase in any way except for the price and build quality, really.

@bifpowell Sometimes, I don't get what SwiftKey is smoking. I type the right word, it's in the dictionary, but it still gets corrected to something else...

It's an Epiphone.

I once had a Strat Affinity. I liked how it handled and sounded, but all the plastic disintegrated, so I threw it out. I ended up with an Epiphone SG because they happened to have one in a store I went to and seemed slightly more up-market than the Strat Affinity while still being affordable.

@bifpowell Sitting at my computer, I just noticed that my phone had replaced Nile with Nike...