« first day (4218 days earlier)      last day (690 days later) » 
00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 22:00

12:05 AM
@MetaEd Oh I see. Is it the bug about reusing the socket for a different facility?
It's been a bit since I've dug through it, but there are some file-scoped lexicals I don't think are being properly maintained. You can only have one thing using syslog at a time, and so if for example you have two unrelated modules trying to use it, they stomp on each other.
I think I decided the only safe thing to do was to openlog, syslog, and then closelog each time you want to send a message, which rather defeats many purposes.
 
> Earlier this month, DeepMind presented a new “generalist” AI model called Gato. The model can play Atari video games, caption images, chat, and stack blocks with a real robot arm, the Alphabet-owned AI lab announced. All in all, Gato can do 604 different tasks. technologyreview.com/2022/05/23/1052627/…
Run for the hills
 
@CowperKettle On the internet, nobody knows you're un gato.
 
@MetaEd I also feel like I mentioned the problem to somebody or other, maybe Neil Bowers or Doug Bell.
 
What are hills?
 
12:13 AM
A thing you say.
 
> The car, equipped with a few cheap cameras and a massive neural network, veered to the side. When it did, Kendall grabbed the wheel for a few seconds to correct it. The car veered again; Kendall corrected it. It took less than 20 minutes for the car to learn to stay on the road by itself, he says. technologyreview.com/2022/05/27/1052826/…
 
Are they depressions in the ground?
 
"Head for the hills".
2
Man, I'm back to triple-sneezing again from the crazy levels of allergens in the air. Time to take more drugs, and to turbo the air filtering.
 
Is this a "hill"?
It's pretty high.
 
No, it's the UK's Prime Minister
 
12:16 AM
Haha right!
When is he leaving by the way?
 
I haven't taken any allergy-attack drugs yet, but nothing makes sense.
 
Hmm is there something going on with pollen?
Smoke?
 
It's pollen not smoke.
 
There is smoke here.
 
The pines are blowing clouds of thick pollen.
And grass pollens are also high.
But the pine pollen is visibly blowing off the trees.
 
12:18 AM
Annoying.
 
Mountains near Santa Fe. About 50 miles away. All hazy. Some of that is dust, I think.
 
We have no smoke here at all. The 227 downtown must be some anomaly.
 
That is something.
 
My head is streaming uncontrollably, I have a headache, and I'm sneezing a lot. When this hit me yesterday I even had boogers in my eyes.
It wasn't just me. It also hit everybody else I talked to. Well, three other people. In town.
 
Send your sinuses to Arizona.
 
12:22 AM
Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands this week stepped up their pledge to build up to four artificial islands in the North Sea where the energy created by wind turbines could be turned into hydrogen and electricity. ft.com/content/1a48ed46-04ea-4f3e-8558-f8a302206163
 
Oh yeah, the 12-hour time-release pseudoephedrine I took around 13 hours ago has to have worn off.
Just want to call Roto-Rooter for my sinuses.
But pseudoephedrine will quickly drive you mad. It's one of the precursors that street dealers used to make methamphetamine with.
 
So I have heard.
 
Some people can't sleep on it at all.
 
I never use it.
I seldom get allergies, and when I do it's usually just watery eyes.
 
12:27 AM
I can't say I blame you. But this is misery.
 
A sneeze or two here and there.
 
It's not even an antihistamine.
 
@tchrist Yeah, I've been known to avoid misery when possible.
Don't they have anti-leukotriene rugs now?
 
The topical steroid you can spray in your nose is a better solution, but takes a couple days.
And I forgot to take it this morning. Drat.
Because it's not routine medication.
 
Leukotrienes are a family of eicosanoid inflammatory mediators produced in leukocytes by the oxidation of arachidonic acid (AA) and the essential fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) by the enzyme arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase.Leukotrienes use lipid signaling to convey information to either the cell producing them (autocrine signaling) or neighboring cells (paracrine signaling) in order to regulate immune responses. The production of leukotrienes is usually accompanied by the production of histamine and prostaglandins, which also act as inflammatory mediators.One of their roles (specificall...
 
12:29 AM
@tchrist People who normally suffer for allergies?
 
@Cerberus 2 out of 3, yes. The 3rd felt it and doesn't.
 
@tchrist Have you tried nasal irrigation? Neti pot or the like?
 
Hmm.
 
This has only been going on for about 30 hours.
@Robusto I have before, yes.
I'm back to the "can't think" state.
 
When that happens, one might as well be asleep.
 
12:31 AM
It's so dark here the streetlight kicked on, two hours before sunset. Storm.
@Robusto Agree. I'm about to apply all the OTC remedies available to me. That will include diphenhydramine, which usually puts me under.
Oh yeah, I hear serious thunder coming on now. Must be a pressure drop, too. Down to 23.55" Hg.
 
Supposed to get 10° cooler here tomorrow. Only in the 80s.
 
And I have soaking kitties at the door.
Well, one. The other knows better than to be out in this.
 
The temperature will be in the 80s. That means Peter Gabriel and Debbie Harry Cyndi Lauper will be hot again.
 
Perhaps the allergens will be cleared from the air somewhat by the storm?
 
It can happen.
 
12:35 AM
Let's hope so, then.
 
@Cerberus I had thought that that would happen today. It has not. But I no longer see the yellow clouds.
 
Hmm.
 
I have a massive pine tree right next to my bedroom window. It probably isn't helping.
@Robusto I had a quasi-girlfriend by that name in the 80s. Flashbacks.
 
@tchrist What does quasi mean in connection with girlfriend?
 
Friends with benefits. Doesn't mean not a girl.
It means we slept together from time to time but weren't somehow "dating" let alone exclusively. Just friends.
 
12:39 AM
Ah!
 
OK. Distinction noted.
 
Sounds like a good friendship.
 
I have had a few of those.
More of the other kind, though.
 
I don't believe in quasi-girls. I would have said if it had been a weird sex.
 
More of the auditioning-of-spouse-and-all-that-entails sort of things. Before I met my wife.
 
12:41 AM
No such The Crying Game experience here. Happy without that.
 
I didn't mean to suggest such a thing.
I thought quasi might mean degree of a relationship. Not kind.
 
Something ridiculous just fell from the sky. I wonder what the heck it was. Like a big pine cone out of nowhere.
I can no longer see the nearby hogback. This is going to be intense.
I can't believe how long ago the 80s were.
 
Sounds like it will roll through. Like a brief marriage. And like a brief marriage, when it leaves, it will take your house and your car.
 
Trees are starting to bend.
Oh damn please don't hail.
Or snow. I just planted my tomatoes, damn it.
@Robusto Brief marriages are when boxers take a walk on the wild side.
 
This has been one wacky spring.
 
12:48 AM
The north is gone, replaced by a wall of grey.
@Robusto And tomorrow they're saying we might even have a meteor storm.
 
In the stratosphere.
 
@tchrist it's the latest bug, where somebody takes a negative one return value that indicates an error and passes it directly to a system call...
 
They aren't sure yet, and even if it hits, they don't know what part of the world will get hit most. Could be nothign.
 
I happened to notice that bugs that are months old are still listed as new, so I'm wondering if I reported it in the wrong place
 
@MetaEd I see one from 3 weeks ago: rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Sys-Syslog
You're right, I see one from five years ago still listed as new.
But it seems inconsistent.
Oh it has a non-core maintainer, quelques Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni.
 
12:54 AM
It's not uncommon for ancient, unfixed bugs to be "current" on such lists.
 
Rings no bells.
@MetaEd Yeah, that's yours. Gotcha.
 
@tchrist That's the one. if this were a Git repository I would create a pull request.
 
Indeed.
My own problems with it were also related to options.
 
to solve more than just my surface problem I would need to understand the XS framework and I'm afraid if I tried to understand that I would never get my head out of my ass again
 
Fortunately, I do understand XS well enough. Let me look.
 
12:59 AM
Amazing, it's not real video.
It's on the new Unreal Engine 5
 
Oh you're hitting 622: $value = -1 if index($value, "not a valid") >= 0;
Oh, the constant function is defined in jolly const-xs.inc.
fallback/const-xs.inc
25:          sv = sv_2mortal(newSVpvf("%s is not a valid Sys::Syslog macro", s));

const-xs.inc
299:	    sv = newSVpvf("%"SVf" is not a valid Sys::Syslog macro",

t/constants.t
16:like( $@, "/^This is not a valid $testpack macro/", "trying a non-existing macro");
19:like( $@, "/^NOSUCHNAME is not a valid $testpack macro/", "trying a non-existing macro");

Syslog.pm
574:    if (index($value, "not a valid") >= 0) {
580:    $value = -1 if index($value, "not a valid") >= 0;

Syslog.c
Probably from sv = newSVpvf("%"SVf" is not a valid Sys::Syslog macro" then after translation.
@MetaEd Does your proposed fix to Syslog.pm make it all copacetic?
It definitely should not be just using the return value from xlate($opt) without checking for the error scenario first.
Sometimes it does, but not always.
Here is where it's gone bad:
 803 sub connect_native {
 804     my ($errs) = @_;
 805     my $logopt = 0;
 806
 807     # reconstruct the numeric equivalent of the options
 808     for my $opt (keys %options) {
 809         $logopt += xlate($opt) if $options{$opt}
 810     }
Line 809 isn't noticing that xlate return -1.
 
The patch solves the problem perfectly on my Linux platform by causing it to fall back to the Unix method automatically instead of requiring me to manually override. but my patch doesn't solve the underlying problem with the native method, which I don't understand.
 
I really don't enjoy compiling with cc -g so that I can use gdb on the XS file. :)
 
however that's a data point of one
 
Also, I think %options was the file-scoped lexical that didn't get handled right when last I looked at it.
Oh, I know why not.
NHm.
I bet there's no LOG_NOEOL in #include <sys/syslog.h>, that it's a perl-specific extension.
/*
 * Option flags for openlog.
 *
 * LOG_ODELAY no longer does anything.
 * LOG_NDELAY is the inverse of what it used to be.
 */
#define LOG_PID         0x01    /* log the pid with each message */
#define LOG_CONS        0x02    /* log on the console if errors in sending */
#define LOG_ODELAY      0x04    /* delay open until first syslog() (default) */
#define LOG_NDELAY      0x08    /* don't delay open */
#define LOG_NOWAIT      0x10    /* don't wait for console forks: DEPRECATED */
#define LOG_PERROR      0x20    /* log to stderr as well */
So yeah, I think that that's why. This is ancient code, that shouldn't be buggy.
 
1:14 AM
I had to patch sysklogd too, but that's another story. apparently the developer of sysklogd threw the three different log standards plus support for kernel logs into his executable and didn't really test anything.
 
These:
 100 my %options = (
 101     ndelay  => 0,
 102     noeol   => 0,
 103     nofatal => 0,
 104     nonul   => 0,
 105     nowait  => 0,
 106     perror  => 0,
 107     pid     => 0,
 108 );
 
but that was straight C code, so I simply patched it and sent the developer a pull request
 
Do not map all that well to the C #define values.
 
do some of those need to be deprecated in favor of a set that does map to the modern define values?
 
Okay now I remember my troubles. %options wasn't getting reset between openlog calls.
 
1:20 AM
@tchrist you plainly have done many deep dives into the syslog code
 
@MetaEd No, I think rather they need to be detected on their own. Those were never all supposed to pass through to the C code I thought.
 156 # coderef for a nicer handling of errors
 157 my $err_sub = $options{nofatal} ? \&warnings::warnif : \&croak;
For example, that one is handled internally. Some are.
@MetaEd hurts
 
I should just downgrade back to 5.8 :D
 
heh
We still have one webapp running 5.22 and it's a bother.
I can't imagine going back to something before 5.10
Trying to be infinitely backwards compatible leads to incredibly twisted code.
 149 # Perl 5.6.0's warnings.pm doesn't have warnings::warnif()
 150 if (not defined &warnings::warnif) {
 151     *warnings::warnif = sub {
 152         goto &warnings::warn if warnings::enabled(__PACKAGE__)
 153     }
 154 }
Most of our code runs 5.32 or 5.34; something like that. There are security alerts that make you have to do that.
If you hope to be blahblah-compliant. I forget both blahs.
Is our bin/testsyslog.pl attached to the ticket?
Clearly the RT GUI isn't one I'm familiar enough with.
Oh you're runing 5.34 too; good.
I think my problem was that something else had already called openlog so it was still connected and all those old opts were still there.
And you can't just close it yourself first because now the other guy will lose his options.
Not a good model.
What's "native" on Linux these days? "unix" or "tcp" or "udp"? I know we use UDP syslog, much to my frustration.
We tried using TCP but this causes Bad Things to happen.
Ah yes, we're using rsyslogd.
 
1:59 AM
"unix" is what worked for me. Slackware 15.0
 
2:20 AM
> Historians were left blushing when they deciphered ancient Roman graffiti carved into stone near Hadrian's Wall. The insulting comment, inscribed more than 1,700 years ago, was unearthed near Hexham, Northumberland.
> Roman epigraphy specialists recognised the message, found at the Roman site of Vindolanda, as a mangled version of the words Secundinus cacator, which translates into English as "Secundinus, the shitter".
 
Not surprised.
Which sounds better, a remote proctoring company or a remote invigilating company?
 
I don't know.
I had to look up 'proctoring'
 
A proctor is an invigilator from North America, not someone checking unmentionables.
 
And 'invigilating', although I once had come across it.
 
They're both just examination monitors.
So they watch over people who are taking an exam.
 
2:26 AM
Remove Vedette Company
Vedette - a sentinel, usually on horseback, stationed on the outpost of an army, to watch an enemy and give notice of danger.
 
@CowperKettle Have you seen the scandalous graffiti from Pompeii?
 
"Vedette" would add romantic flair to it.
@tchrist Yes, they are famous
 
@CowperKettle Unless that means a stripper.
 
We've lost the Library of Alexandria, but scandalous graffiti will survive even the collision of our galaxy with M31 Andromeda.
> Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knife like other knives,
That cost me eighteen pence.
 
2:53 AM
> *Data as of May 29, 2022, 5 pm Eastern.
Total confirmed monkeypox/orthopoxvirus cases: 14
Meanwhile, my county has a normalized new case rate of covid over 300/100k/day and new covid hospitalizations > 10/100k/day, the highest in the state. I don't know why. Graduation parties? Probably not?
Maybe Boccaccio was right.
 
3:50 AM
@tchrist I have to admit I'm replacing an Internet facing mail and web server that's been up since 2009. It really was still running 5.8. It's amazing how much things have changed. I still had a CGI application I really liked -- and that's been yanked from Perl now.
 
 
1 hour later…
5:15 AM
@CowperKettle And what is the large symbol in the lower left quarter of the stone?
 
@Cerberus Gladius, the traditional Roman sword
 
Ah, yes, that will be it.
 
5:32 AM
Russia registered Mirobivir, the Russian-made analogue of Paxlovid, on 5 May, but it's not available in farmacies yet.
 
Hmm.
 
Only the Russian-made analogue of Molnupiravir is already available. But it's three times less efficient against covid compared with Paxlovid.
Paxlovid first became available in January, therefore Russia has lost 120 days, and continues to lose lives by not making it available. npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/22/1066761436/…
We could have used our oil money to buy a batch early, at least for the most endangered patients.
> -/1726/5460 - дней до вакцинации 50/60/70% населения с таким темпом
Russia will need a further 1726 days to get to the 60% level of vaccination.
Based on the average for the past week.
I can see that this task has slid very low on the government's totem pole.
And the only Russian drug that's available, the Molnupiravir analogue, is absent in all pharmacies. You have to order it, and it costs 7000 rubles, quite a lot for a country where 40 thousand rubles is a worthly monthly salary for 50%+ of population.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:19 AM
@CowperKettle they will have gladly sacrificed their lives for the nation, you understand. It was just more pre-emptive this time.
sigh
 
7:45 AM
> In November 2021, Spinoza-scholar Yitzhak Melamed was denied entry into the synagoge of the Portuguese-Israelite community of Amsterdam and declared persona-non-grata by Rabbi Joseph Serfati
Amsterdam's religious leaders are still sullen at Spinoza, after 400 years.
 
8:37 AM
@CowperKettle That explains: In vaginam gladium recondere.
 
9:23 AM
@M.A.R. Can one buy paxlovid in Iran?
I'm still shocked that Russia has not licensed foreign-made paxlovid. At least the richer Russians could have bought it. Maybe in some cases people could have chipped in to save a relative or a friend.
It's just something that is beyond my understanding. But I'll abstain from harsher words out of fear, since this all stays online.
@jlliagre Those Romans had a phrase for everything
 
 
2 hours later…
11:19 AM
@CowperKettle doubt it. But what I had in mind was them not buying vaccines from the US or the UK when no one else had made Covid vaccines, and having thousands killed because of that. Later on they bought Astrazeneca vaccines from Korea and India. The whole thing is very petty.
@CowperKettle from my understanding, there's a bit of bureaucracy involved with registering a drug in the national formulary.
 
12:05 PM
@M.A.R. Yes, but in such an extreme situation other countries' agencies acted quick, while Russia is stil "considering".
Russia registered it's own half-baked Sputnik vaccine right off the bat, based on an ultra-small study.
 
12:20 PM
Ukraine registered foreign paxlovid in February, as did Serbia
So it was really no problem for Russia to do the same
 
12:59 PM
The first supercomputer has broken the exaflop barrier techxplore.com/news/…
> Exascale also reaches the estimated processing power of the human brain at the neural level, a target of the Human Brain Project.
From Wikipedia.
 
@CowperKettle Looks more like a crude drawing of male genitalia.
 
@Robusto Oh! It could be that, too
 
1:31 PM
That would be more likely, I think, in a piece of hostile graffiti.
#Worldle #129 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
__________________
Wordle 345 3/6

🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟩🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@CowperKettle Also, the twin circles at the base are a giveaway (one is partial because of the stone fracture). A gladius did not have circular guards at the hilt.
 
1:52 PM
> As of 2021 Reporters Without Borders considers the country to have the overall worst press freedom in the world, even lower than North Korea, as all media publications and access are heavily controlled by the government.
I would never have thought that there could be less press freedom than in North Korea.
I lost the Worldle and read up about the country in Wiki.
 
See? I'm not alone in thinking it's a phallus.
@CowperKettle I had just been reading about that country last week, so it was fresh in my mind.
@CowperKettle Which country is claimed to be worse than NK?
 
@Robusto The one that was in Worldle
 
Oh.
Yeah, that would be saying something.
My reading was historical, not current.
I can't discuss that, though it is interesting, because spoilers exist.
 
2:14 PM
#Worldle #129 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
 
2:29 PM
It's sometimes hard to tell if some statements are to be taken at face value or are second degré humor...
 
2:43 PM
That is what culture is about!
@Robusto My reply was ironic, when Cowper said it was a gladius, i.e. I thought he was joking.
 
@Cerberus Heh.
 
#Worldle #129 X/6 (94%)
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬛➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬛➡️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
It ain't much but it's an honest attempt.
 
@Vikas This one is closer to you than to any of us!
 
@Cerberus Sometimes close is not enough!
I probably heard about it today only.
 
One thing that helps is being able to see the difference between a political border and a natural one (i.e., river, coastline).
 
2:50 PM
BTW it kind of looks like Laos. Doesn't it?
 
I must admit this one was easier because I had seen it in the same game before.
I did know it had a highly repressive régime.
We get a ton of asylum seekers from there.
Who, by the way, do very poorly here.
 
@Vikas Only marginally.
 
Yeah that is fine.
 
Laos looks rather like a spiked cudgel.
To me, anyway.
 
Yeah more beautiful edges.
Can you see two ants here?
I need to know what is their exact name? Just ant or carpentar ant or some other ant?
 
2:58 PM
Doesn't look like a carpenter ant.
But I'm no ant expert.
 
The size is about 0.5 mm
They have attacked my room.
 
00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 22:00

« first day (4218 days earlier)      last day (690 days later) »