• 26 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023



  • Card Catalogs were these index-cards we kept in a cabinet that helped people look for a book. And don’t say “word of mouth”, because card catalogs didn’t help with that. Card Catalogs helped you go from “Author or Subject” to “Book”, so you were literally trying to figure out a book you already “had an idea” about.

    Tell me, how do you look for new books today? Do you use Amazon’s search engine? Google’s search engine?


    Internet Directories were these lists of webpages that we used to organize. It was before webrings. The gist is that an internet directory is a list of cool websites on a certain subject, and we can keep those lists organized. Alas, no one used them after good search engines were made.


    Curated TV Networks are losing out to Netflix, Youtube, and TikTok. All of which are search-engine based media consumption technologies. All hail the algorithm.

    Now tell me where “search” is actually losing in our society. Maybe Google isn’t as dominant as it once was, but Netflix is still a damn search bar.

    Maybe TikTok is finally something different: you don’t even search anymore. The algorithm assumes it knows what videos you like and shoves the next video into your face.






  • Mexico is just as pissed at Guatemalan and Venezuelan migrants as the USA, is not more so.

    Remember that Mexico has had such a booming economy that net-migrants are emigrating (leaving US) and returning to Mexico for ~the last decade or so.

    That’s what’s so stupid about Trump’s plan vs Biden plan. Biden was working on building Mexico’s southern border to help stop migrants, helping both of our countries. Trump on the other hand is too stupid to figure out this simple solution.


  • Netflix has a substantial number of caching boxes owned by Netflix on the edge.

    This means that a neighborhood has a cache server with 20TB of video serving everyone in the neighborhood (and maybe also the next 3 or 4 neighborhoods). So if everyone watches the same episode they only pay for one cloud download / bandwidth cost.

    Netflix outsources cloud for their core infra but then runs very very heavy edges around the world. It’s backwards but if you think about Netflix and the watching pattern of neighborhoods (ex: neighbor likely tells friends a new show is good, then everyone watches it) it’s to the benefit of Netflix to run their infra like this.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if these caching servers help each other out like BitTorrent either to avoid central cloud bandwidth costs.












  • Today was 50F (10C) and I’m estimating closer to 3mi/kw-hr.

    Or in other words, warmer weather is close to +25% more range and efficiency compared to last week’s cold weather test.

    Note that this number is very preliminary (ie: reliant upon Toyota’s battery measurements) and I’m currently recharging my car with the Kill-a-watt to verify my initial estimates. I’ve also got a work meeting tomorrow morning, but I’ll try to write down the results of today’s warmer weather test and report back to you.

    Alternatively, if I forget to write down the Kill-a-watt results tomorrow morning, I’ll just repeat the test again on Wednesday or something. It should be warm weather all this week.