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Recent Notes

adingbatponder :nixos: 👾 · 1w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d No clue. All I know was when it was refactored it was able to use 32 processors instead of only 2.
adingbatponder :nixos: 👾 · 1w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d Well that is what rust seems to be like. I used a lot of packages incl. browser and screen grabbing tools which took ages to build. Like 20 mins. (It was inside a nixos flake though.)
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
I've seen people claiming - with a straight face - that mechanical refactoring is a good use-case for LLM-based tools. Well, sed was developed in 1974 and - according to Wikipedia - first shipped in UNIX version 7 in 1979. On modern machines it can process files at speeds of several GB/s and will not randomly introduce errors while processing them. It doesn't cost billions, a subscription or internet access. It's there on your machine, fully documented. What are we even talking about?
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adingbatponder :nixos: 👾 · 1w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d For fun I tried writing rust code with claude code. The code took an age to compile when it worked (do we call it build?). The project took months and so the code got large & was slow t...
Dr. Christopher Kunz · 1w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d It's also Turing complete.
Gabriele Svelto · 2w
And to reinforce this estimate I've looked at the numbers we got from the users who run the memory tester after having experienced a crash: for every two crashes we think are caused by a bit-flip the ...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
And for the record I'm looking at this mostly on computers and phones, but this affects *every* device. Routers, printers, etc... you name it. That fancy ARM-based MacBook with RAM soldered on the CPU package? We've got plenty of crashes from those, good luck replacing that RAM without super-specialized equipment and an extraordinarily talented technician doing the job. 5/5
Gabriele Svelto · 2w
In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! If I subtract crashes that are caused by resource exhaustion (such as out-of-me...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
And to reinforce this estimate I've looked at the numbers we got from the users who run the memory tester after having experienced a crash: for every two crashes we think are caused by a bit-flip the memory tester found one genuine hardware issue. Keep in mind that this is not doing an extensive test of all the machine's RAM, it only checks up to 1 GiB of memory and runs for no longer than 3 seconds... and it has found lots of real issues! 4/5
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Gabriele Svelto · 2w
And for the record I'm looking at this mostly on computers and phones, but this affects *every* device. Routers, printers, etc... you name it. That fancy ARM-based MacBook with RAM soldered on the CPU package? We've got plenty of crashes from those, good luck replacing that RAM without super-special...
Gabriele Svelto · 2w
In the last week we received ~470000 crash reports, these do not represent all crashes because it's an opt-in system, the real number of crashes will be several times larger. Still, out of these ~2500...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! If I subtract crashes that are caused by resource exhaustion (such as out-of-memory crashes) this number goes up to around 15%. This is a bit skewed because users with flaky hardware will crash more often than users with functioning machines, but even then this dwarfs all the previous estimates I saw regarding this problem. 3/5
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Gabriele Svelto · 2w
And to reinforce this estimate I've looked at the numbers we got from the users who run the memory tester after having experienced a crash: for every two crashes we think are caused by a bit-flip the memory tester found one genuine hardware issue. Keep in mind that this is not doing an extensive tes...
Gabriele Svelto · 2w
A few years ago I designed a way to detect bit-flips in Firefox crash reports and last year we deployed an actual memory tester that runs on user machines after the browser crashes. Today I was lookin...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
In the last week we received ~470000 crash reports, these do not represent all crashes because it's an opt-in system, the real number of crashes will be several times larger. Still, out of these ~25000 crashes have been detected as having a potential bit-flip. That's one crash every twenty potentially caused by bad/flaky memory, it's huge! And because it's a conservative heuristic we're underestimating the real number, it's probably going to be at least twice as much. 2/5
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Gabriele Svelto · 2w
In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! If I subtract crashes that are caused by resource exhaustion (such as out-of-memory crashes) this number goes up to around 15%. This is a bit skewed because users with flaky hardw...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
A few years ago I designed a way to detect bit-flips in Firefox crash reports and last year we deployed an actual memory tester that runs on user machines after the browser crashes. Today I was looking at the data that comes out of these tests and now I'm 100% positive that the heuristic is sound and a lot of the crashes we see are from users with bad memory or similarly flaky hardware. Here's a few numbers to give you an idea of how large the problem is. 🧵 1/5
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Gabriele Svelto · 2w
In the last week we received ~470000 crash reports, these do not represent all crashes because it's an opt-in system, the real number of crashes will be several times larger. Still, out of these ~25000 crashes have been detected as having a potential bit-flip. That's one crash every twenty potential...
Michal Špondr · 2w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d Firefox can consume a large amount of memory. I assume that the more RAM programs use (which web browsers do), the more bit flip errors can be expected. Am I right?
Eniko Fox · 2w
According to my feed today computing is basically over and software engineering is basically over and people buying games is basically over so I guess what I'm getting from all this is my life is basi...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
@nprofile1q... the reason why the botlickers have become so loud lately is that it's their toy that's about to taken away from them. The AI industry is crumbling under a mountain of debt and gigantic losses. Hardware and now energy too just got a lot more expensive, making those gigantic losses even larger. The collapse will be absolutely spectacular and will hurt us too, but it is coming.
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LisPi · 2w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqumyuhh5r9yhqxyr7y3clqtvmc6ea6rkldmykeqdg0uvu35ajg43swf2y0d nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpq33sylpp8e2gpugvr5km08ee86q4l3u0f9hv0d6lcrcax7mksk22sva40t9 Reading an article earlier today about the actual real expected economic...
Gabriele Svelto profile picture
#OTD 30 years ago the Space Shuttle mission STS-75 launched. It carried the peculiar Tethered Satellite System as its main experiment and was the first space mission where a #Linux based computer was used in space. I remember it well because I saw the launch; my father was part of the ground crew and brought us over to the US with him. It was a memorable experience that filled teenage-me with awe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-75