I'm not nearly educated enough about this subject to try to summarise it, but the research being carried out by Michael Levin's group into how organisms control anatomy growth is completely fascinating and has the feel of a breakthrough. Almost all the talks I've seen are good, for example:
This one is the winner for me in the thread. I saw a video of it a while ago and I was fascinated by the idea that voltage differences are the way the DNA gets expressed. Yet nobody seems to be taking about the bioelectrical science of it except for this small academic crowd.
I am also not nearly educated enough, and also following this work very closely. With the strides made in the past several years I'm always surprised I don't see it being discussed more (outside of a niche of academics)
Is the swap technique you mention writing to a tempfile and then performing an (atomic) rename to overwrite the existing file? I understand how that could cause data loss if the process exited before the rename but I don't understand how it might cause corruption. Are you able to expand on that?
A related thing I discovered recently is the potential non-atomicity of writes using O_APPEND on Linux[1], although I couldn't get the attached test program to fail on my machine. I would love to find some kind of confirmation that this behaviour has been changed and that appends can be relied upon to be atomic.
In the application I'm working on at the moment I've managed to get add more certainty around this stuff since I'm only ever appending to the file in 4096 byte chunks, so can perform a simple file size check to see if data was written completely or if the file needs to truncated to the nearest multiple of 4096. I'm fortunate that it prevents having to do something like open it read only to verify contents as you mentioned.
Yes, I used a tempfile with atomic rename. I agree data corruption should not occur as long as fsync(2) is used before the swap. If I remember correctly an empty file was an error condition in this case, though, and that sometimes occurred. Problems can occur when the user shuts down the OS or hits that reset button. Besides, in Go it's easy to inadvertently write to a file concurrently and extra care has to be taken to avoid that. So you might need a locking mechanism, too, and then it's getting really complex.
Of course, it should be perfectly possible to get this right in languages like Go or Racket. At least Go has low-level enough interfaces to the filesystem API. My point was merely that using Sqlite turned out to be less error-prone in my experience for end-user applications, especially if you use WAL and set some cautious Pragma options. It's really good at dealing with unusual filesystem conditions.
I agree that reliably writing files is a sneakier problem than it first appears and that the likes of SQLite have already solved it.
Despite that my preference these days is still for a DB, like almost all dependencies, to have to justify its existence in my projects rather than defaulting to it as many seem to favour. It's straightforward to add SQLite but I'd typically rather take a little extra pain around the filesystem upfront to not have to deal with all the extra complexity of an SQL database if I can avoid it.
Naturally, this kind of simplicity is just one factor among many such as the size and shape of the data, expected access patterns and a host of others to weigh up during the trade-off decision.
> I have a deGoogled phone running Lineage, but even with that, no Google Play Services, and some custom settings (like changing the captive portal URLs), there's still network traffic to Google.
I'm running LineageOS without Play Services too and didn't about know this!
Do you have any reference materials (I guess getting busy with Wireshark and the source is my next step)? I found this Reddit thread[1] talking about a connectivity check but am keen to start tracking down any others.
When nearing your final resting place and contemplating all the rich intricacies of your life, do you want to be one of those people who didn't learn to juggle? No. That would be silly.
So take up juggling!
Aside from obvious things like becoming more coordinated and increasing your spatial awareness, it will teach you a lot about learning. It's fascinating when a challenging new pattern moves from deliberate and entirely conscious effort to straddling the conscious/unconscious divide until it gets bedded in to your nervous system and you can do it without thinking.
Juggling is almost entirely non-competitive and jugglers are overwhelmingly supportive and eager to teach and learn new tricks from each other. It doesn't seem to be possible to get into it without also wanting to teach anyone who wants to learn. There aren't many egos getting in the way, which I find rather pure and beautiful.
Contemporary juggling is hugely varied. You can go from technical and accurate numbers jugging (high number of objects) to flowing improvised moves to something that is as much dance as circus stuff.
Also siteswap[1], a notation for juggling patterns, is cool!
a juggling illusion i learned is juggling 4 balls is really just juggling 2 in each hand.
you can also juggle bouncing off the floor, lighter objects (scarves, tissues), various patterns (above instead of under, 1 up 2 up) and if really adventurous try while unicycling!
Another thing you might want to investigate (for Linux, not sure about cross-platform alternatives) is OverlayFS[1], which allows you to create union filesystems where some layers are read-only and the top layer is read-write. This can allow destructive operations like rm without actually removing anything from the lower (read-only) layers, using whiteouts.
I'd have replied to this on lobste.rs but don't have an account. I'm not a heavy poster but I'd love an invite if anyone has one going :)
I need your email for an invitation; if you can send me your address via my own email (see my profile), or via keybase, I'll send you an invite. I don't see your email advertised in your profile here on HN, so my hands are tied for now :)
I've had very positive experiences with Mail-in-a-Box for exactly the sort of situation you describe. I think it's a great project that pulls together other packages very nicely.
I was fed up with configuring everything constantly and tuning this, that and the other. These sort of threads always seem to have plenty of people who have a bad time running their own mailserver (and of course your mileage may vary), but I don't really have to touch it at all.
> That sounds like an interesting and varied role.
It is, and it doesn't get as much formal recognition in the research world. Some folks are trying to change this [0], but unfortunately for the moment research software engineers often end up more of a happy accident than a deliberate decision on the part of labs. Part of this is due to weirdness in how funding is allocated for research positions at universities- instead of research programmers being funded through operating expenses like a secretary, administrator or many (but not all) librarians, most lab positions are dependent upon soft money (i.e., grants) that could potentially evaporate unexpectedly. I had a friend at ${BAY_AREA_UNIVERSITY} who almost had this happen to him recently, but fortunately his PI got another grant so he didn't need to get furloughed/laid off. When I was living in Ithaca, I noticed a similar trend of non-faculty taking sabbaticals due to funding issues and then returning 6 months to a year or so later in a different department [1]. That sort of instability in employment is part of what scared me into moving to a major metropolitan area- I still work for a university, but I know I have options (although I'm currently not funded by soft money- last job was though).
I love my job. Most of the projects are medium sized ones with 100-200 hours of programming involved, so I get to see a good variety. Splitting my time between C, Java Script, MATLAB, Python, Swift, PHP and R means that I am probably not an expert in any of them, but I we have a solid team of general purpose programmers who can handle almost anything the labs send our way.
My only complaint would be that the pay is a little on the low side. Otherwise the work and the work environment are both excellent.
I hear you! I'm in my late 30s and, although I don't have a family, I'm in a similar sounding situation myself. My first act sounds pretty similar to your own and, for one reason or another, in the last few years I've undergone a similar sounding shift.
Although it's all for the good, I've found the shifting identity tough (I've always had a very clear self identity). When talking to others, any description of myself or something in my life that I've come out with has been accurate but several years out of date.
Very recently (last month or two) I've started to notice a little bit of change around this. I suppose enough things have happened to this version of myself that I'm starting to build some identity around that, as well as just being more comfortable with the new situation in general. I have also been reading and thinking about a lot of Buddhist philosophy, which I think has helped give me some perspective.
I hope you're able to find whatever viewpoint you need to move through this situation. I'm sure that you will - life has such a broad and deep variety of experiences and there are many different avenues for adventure and reward.
I'm in my mid 30's and if anything I'm in the opposite boat, most of my accomplishments are in the last 5 years, and the last year in particular.
My identity was very tenuous for most of my life, and has only come into focus quite recently. I spent most of my life trying not to be transgender, in particular, and transitioned over the last year. A lot of the things I do and am now would have been wild fantasy even a few years ago. It is going well, and it feels nearly complete.
I do worry what I will do with my life now. Transitioning has been an all consuming thing in all kinds of senses, but the end is in sight at this point. Being the correct gender frees up a tremendous amount of emotional and mental energy - but I don't know what to do with that energy. I've overcome something tremendous but it's left me about where most other people are.
I definitely want my life to be about more than gender. I could very easily stagnate where I am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0
Creating new species without genetic changes seems wild!