Does anyone know of a graph for the number of Debian source packages over the years? I found ircbots.debian.net/stats (top graph). Is there a longer one?

@AndrasDeak A detailed overview, in case you are interested - thewire.in/rights/…

Hi there

It's mostly accurate, as far as I can tell.

Hey @αғsнιη.

you guys anyone have ever used the latest stable redis 6.2.5?

@FaheemMitha thanks, I think I'll pass

@αғsнιη I'm going to upgrade the redis version to 6.2.5 but I'm not sure if redis memory issue will be fixed on that or not; I almost tried all possible solutions but no luck

if anyone having the same experience for redis memory issue, appreciated to share solution; tried to set maxmemory and maxmemory-policy; memory purge, etc, but the only solution now is to perform restarting the redis instance

@αғsнιη What issue are you seeing?

@FaheemMitha redis just eating memory

daily over +1G

fragmentation_ratio is over 60%

@αғsнιη Sounds nasty. Have you tried reporting it?

What distribution?

not reported, but I found the same reported issues on SO, SF and other forums and solution was just what I mentioned in above

@αғsнιη So is it a bug?

I suggest reporting it. It may not do any good, but it will also not do any harm. Is it aesy to reproduce?

will go with upgrade then, if not resolved, will report it

memory purge command release the memory but then as said daily its memory usage increase by 1G

I also don't know why when I limited memory for redis to 2G, but it exceed over this limitation too

@αғsнιη Do you use Redis as a DB, or something else?

How else would you use a DB?

@AndrasDeak It's described as a data store. I've never used it.

> Redis, which stands for Remote Dictionary Server, is a fast, open-source, in-memory key-value data store for use as a database, cache, message broker, and queue.

from aws.amazon.com/redis

I see

@αғsнιη consider asking a U&L question?

@AndrasDeak At work we use it as a cache, not a DB. This is one of its primary uses, actually AFAIK

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…:

> Redis popularized the idea of a system that can be considered at the same time a store and a cache, using a design where data is always modified and read from the main computer memory, but also stored on disk in a format that is unsuitable for random access of data, but only to reconstruct the data back in memory once the system restarts.

sounds like it's doing its job of storing things in memory! Maybe there's a surprising input or amount of input somewhere.

@terdon I guess I don't have clear-cut intuition to distinguish between these

a database and a cache sound like the same object to me, with different uses

But this is understandable because I don't do anything DB-like.

@AndrasDeak a database is supposed to be persistent, a cache isn’t

Unless it's in-memory? :P

... and is reconstructed once the system restarts? :)

@AndrasDeak right, in which case the distinction would be that a database contains all the accessible data, a cache only the hottest

@StephenKitt yup

@terdon yes, we used as a cache for some amount of data

@JeffSchaller will do, but I have no hope that I can get different answer than just what I looked for few days

@JeffSchaller yes

@αғsнιη I understand that feeling! I'm often surprised by the perspectives & experience of this community, though.

@JeffSchaller I believe it's better to ask a question and hope I can get an answer, just I need to prepare what I did and didn't work or did worked but not resolved permanently

Hi @PrabhjotSingh. I was just looking at some of our email exchanges from 2018.

@Kusalananda That makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Sorry for the late reply

Random question. Has anyone here ever worked in a bank? Specifically, in an investment-type setup? Trading and so forth?

@FaheemMitha I worked at an investment bank but as a systems admin not a trader

@jesse_b I was being unclear, probably. I didn't mean to ask whether people worked as a trader. Just whether they worked in an investment bank.

How was it?

I have a theory (unsullied by actual experience), that investment banks are full of dreadful creeps who only care about money. Possibly also cocaine and prostitutes.

(Obviously, this may be inaccurate.)

Having said that, all the investing banking people I've met in my life (mostly in India), struck me as pretty awful.

I don't think the people were bad it's just the culture

I didn't take the time to get to know any of them better.

@jesse_b Can you elaborate?

Well our building for example was in hoboken with literally the best view you could possibly have of manhattan. The traders had this giant all glass office (we called the fish tank) right on the manhattan side and everyone else in the company was crammed on the other side of the building with no view

I was just thinking about this, because I was watching a TV series called "Industry". HBO. Set in London.

People treated the guys that did the trading as higher beings and everyone catered to their every need

they weren't bad guys and it makes sense, they make the money. everyone else exists to support their operation

@jesse_b Hmm. That's certainly the capitalist view of things. I didn't mean you, specifically.

but it just wasn't fun for me being in IT. We would spend a few million dollars a year on a swift line which is some sort of banking network that is needed for making transactions, but the entire budget for the rest of the IT department was less than that one connection

We had about a dozen traders and their computers cost more than the combined cost of the computers the rest of the 300 or so employees used

and for no good reason too lol, they used bloomberg terminals which are just repackaged big brand stuff with crazy price tags

and also the banking model in general is weird to me. Banks have like a very specific rank structure almost like the military

doesn't matter what department you are in the promotion path goes from like "associate, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president" and I think there are more in there I'm not remembering

but essentially 70% of the company has vice president in their title

@FaheemMitha did you end up buying any amd when we talked about it the other day

@AndrasDeak That's technically not a bank. Well, nobody knows what it is.

@jesse_b An AMD processor, you mean? No, no computer purchases yet. I'm very slow at buying things. Honestly, I don't like shopping.

@FaheemMitha amd stock

@jesse_b You mean equities? No. Why? And I don't recall talking about it.

@FaheemMitha It dropped down to ~$72/share a few months ago after some news about semiconductor shortages came out and we talked about it

@jesse_b Did you like the work? Did you treat you well i.e. respectfully? And did they pay well (that's a separate question, of course).

it hit $120 today

@jesse_b Ah, yes. I think you were thinking of buying it. Did you?

@jesse_b I see.

Yeah I'm up 55% on it although I think it's overpriced right now so I expect it to drop soon

Equity research is murder. Too much stuff to look at. And it's not exactly productive activity. Just being a good little capitalist slave.

@jesse_b Congratulations. :-)

I've got 20 shares at an average of $76 each. I expect it to settle around $100/share

@jesse_b I see. If you are confident it will go down, why not sell it? Or are you planning to stick around for the long term? I don't know anything about AMD, so don't have an opinion.

I know basically nothing about investing, but I instinctively incline towards long term. My mental heuristics suggest that's how you make the real money.

I am all about long term. I just have to make 10%/year to retire in 2034. Not trying to take any risks

One could probably model it. Possibly people have.

@jesse_b That sounds like a good strategy. Do you do a lot of research?

Found any good forums? I found a good Indian one, to my surprise. I hope it doesn't disappear.

@FaheemMitha Not as much as I should but I do some

@jesse_b OK

Hello. I need to (kind of) get a network bridge working. But I'm a bit confused about where to start. Any ideas?

People that have no idea what they are doing often do better than the professionals though lol. Monkeys literally beat the market lol. Peter Lynch often says essentially that the average person actually has an advantage over investment professionals because they have inside information about whatever field they are in

For example I know intel has a foothold in the industry so great that I am willing to bet a significant portion of my retirement money that it will still be number 1 in ten years, and I know that amd is a powerful up-in-comer that also wont be going anywhere in the next 10 years

@jesse_b I'm not sure I agree with that. Though the investment bankers I've talked to in Bombay had no idea what they were talking about. On the other hand, the forum I mentioned, run by amateur investors, is quite good, I think. Very informative.

But it's the only thing of its kind I've found in India.

Nearly all the publically available information about finance here is noise.

@MinaMichael A bridge network for what?

@jesse_b Hi. So I have two nodes. And they're connected via a bridge. But I'm not sure how to configure things.

@jesse_b Investment professionals are supposed to acquaint themselves with the details of whatever field they're investing in.

@FaheemMitha well investment bankers certainly know what they are doing but on average they do not outperform the market, it's actually quite rare for them to do so. Yet studies have been done where literal monkeys throw darts at a wall street journal and they often outperform the market

@jesse_b Remind me what the market is again. You mean the index?

The Dow Jones? The NASDAQ? Something else?

@MinaMichael what operating system(s)?

@jesse_b Two Ubuntu VMs.

With a bridge in between.

When I speak of the market I generally think of S&P 500 but yeah you can replace it with whatever you want...except nasdaq that one is useless :)

@MinaMichael maybe tecmint.com/create-network-bridge-in-ubuntu?

@jesse_b OK, S&P 500, then.

Okay cool. I may have passed by this link. But in any case, if I have a list of network interfaces, I don't know how to figure out which one of them is the one connected to the bridge. Any ideas?

I'll look deeper into the link.

@FaheemMitha professional traders are better at not losing money than they are at making it which arguably is better I guess

@MinaMichael My personal experience is that networking is a bit tricky. If you are not in a huge hurry and are willing to learn something I'd sit down with a book or some other suitable documentation and work through a bit of it. Like the exercises, if there are any.

They do some things that are kind of silly though and they know it but the system is designed to facilitate it. For example they are evaluated quarterly so they can't think long term. When AMD dipped for example they would have had to sell even though they knew that it would recover. And all the fund managers follow each other which creates these instabilities

All of a sudden dozens of large funds sell off all their amd it causes the stock to drop even further

@FaheemMitha I think I'm in a hurry X) but in any case, the information that I get from things like ip link show isn't informative enough.

Banking in general has a very follow the leader culture. If you were to hold onto it and had bad numbers at the end of the quarter you would be lectured about how all of your peers sold and you didn't and now your numbers are down. And it's the same with buying. If a stock starts going up all the fund managers buy it, and even if the buying frenzy causes it to go into unreasonable prices you still have to buy it

Also, the output of sudo brctl show is empty.

@MinaMichael I sympathize with the "being in a hurry" part. Life is short, and sometimes it feels too short for documentation. But I think you'll find taking a little time to learn about networking will save you time in the long run. Depending on how much you already know, of course.

Or you could find an expert, and pester him/her.

@jesse_b To be honest with you, statements like "you can't outperform the market in the long term", when there is no thing as "the market", and one is just talking about some index, which is just an arbitrary thing just like anything else, well, they don't carry conviction with me.

@jesse_b So you are not aware of any good forums?

@FaheemMitha Not saying that I didn't look at some documentation. I tried man ip. Where else can I look?

@MinaMichael Oh. There are networking tutorials. And books. I'd do a search. Did you want specific recommendations?

man pages aren't really suitable for learning topics. They're more intended as references.

@FaheemMitha well you know you can buy index funds right

Okay. Is there something about network bridges?

@jesse_b Of course. But that wasn't my point.

the index is the bare minimum, if you don't outperform that you missed out by not just buying index funds

@MinaMichael Yes, a network tutorial or book would cover such things.

Okay. I'll try searching a bit more.

S&P 500 funds have returned an average of 12% a year for the past 30 or 40 years for example so if you hire a professional fund manager and they don't return at least 12% they are losing you money. Except they charge a percentage of all returns so they really have to return at least 15% to make you money and spoiler alert, none of them are capable of doing that

@jesse_b Like I said, this whole index thing is puzzling to me. For example, presumably some of this stocks are presumably overvalued. What makes them so special?

@jesse_b Yes, I understand. Except I'd take a long hard look at that "average of 12% a year" bit. I suspect it's rather important when you buy and sell.

That is exactly why the indices exist. Some stocks are overvalued, some are undervalued. The index is the the best way to get a handle on what the market as a whole is doing

@FaheemMitha sort of but not really. It's compounding interest

If you are up 10% a year for 10 years in a row and then go down 50% you are still up overall

@jesse_b Or you just go with all undervalued?

@jesse_b Yes, I understand.

@FaheemMitha You could try that but very few people have actually done it. You could probably count on both hands the number of people that have outperformed "the market" over their entire career

peter lynch is really the only one I know of

A lot of people brag about their short term returns but the true test of skill is what you have done over a 20-30 year period and very few people are able to brag about those numbers

@jesse_b Yes, I've heard such things. I don't understand where the people making the statements are getting their data from. They have the data of all the investors in the market?

@jesse_b Short term returns mean nothing, of course.

@FaheemMitha All the professionals run funds which are all public data

Well, not much, anyway.

@jesse_b Sure, but there are tons of people who do their own investing.

The average returns of all professionally managed funds is about 8%

and that is before fees

so you end up with 4-5% really

and yes that is why people like peter lynch and warren buffet say you are better investing on your own than going with a professional

That being said I talk to way too many people that honestly think putting their money in gme or amc is a solid move so they probably can't be trusted with their own money either

for the most part though you can pick companies literally at random and beat 5%

They might not be big.

@jesse_b GME is Gamestop. What is AMC?

@jesse_b I inherited some equities. My current position is that I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm experimenting. Very slowly.

Oh, perhaps en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Theatres

yeah people have been artificially driving the prices up on those stocks in order to "stick it to the man" because they were being heavily shorted and children don't know what shorting means so they think it's a bad thing

And now there are people that honestly believe these artificial prices are sustainable and that they can make money on these stocks

A good friend of mine is all in on GME and he has bought several shares at over $200. He keeps trying to convince me to buy them. He is an otherwise smart person and I've done everything I can short of physically shaking him and screaming. I've asked him if he really thinks gamestop is a 15 billion dollar company and he just avoids answering. I've tried to get him to tell me how long does he think the stock can rise, and how far can it go and he really believes it will go up forever