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how does the status monitoring website work under the hood?
  • I can't give an authorative answer (not my domain), but I think there are two ways these types of things are done.

    First is just observing the page or service as an external entity; basically requesting a page or hitting an endpoint, and just tracking whether you get a response (if not, it must be down), or for measuring load level in a very naive way, track the response time. This is easy in the sense that you need no special access to the target. But it's also limited in its accuracy.

    Second way, like what your github example is doing, is having access to special api endpoints for (or direct access to) performance metrics. Since the github status page is literally ran by Github, they obviously have easy access to any metric they could want. They probably (certainly) run services whose entire job is to produce reliable data for their status page.

    The minute details of each of these options is pretty open ended; many ways to do it.

    Just my 5¢ as a non-web developer.

  • Bilinguals, does chatGPT sound different in other languages?
  • I think the misunderstanding here is in thinking ChatGPT has "languages". It doesn't choose a language. It is always drawing from everything it knows. The 'configuration' hence is the same for all languages, it's just basically an invisible prompt telling it, in plain text, how to communicate.

    When you change/add your personalized "Custom Instructions", this is basically the same thing.

    I would assume that this invisible context is in English, no matter what. It should make no difference.

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 29th
  • I know it won't happen, but I keep imagining CDDA getting the "Steam" treatment ala Dwarf Fortress. Both games are amazing... Should play CDDA again myself. Always such a pain to remember HOW to play though, and by the time my muscle memory gets good enough that I can actually fluidly play the game instead of staring at keybinds, I've kinda run out of gas 😄

  • [update] my formerly fresh garlic is bubbling !
  • My parents grow garlic for their own use, and they literally just store it in a basket. No conservation needed. Fine for a year! But this is in Norway, dry and cool (but not cold - they store it in the kitchen), not sure if that matters.

  • What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games?
  • You are totally correct, but I feel like pointing out that a surprising number of games use the 4k texture nomenclature in a totally illogical way; they label it 4k because it's meant to look good on a 4k screen, not because the texture itself is at that resolution (or any loosely related resolution).

    Which is itself really annoying. But I guess less savvy crowd might not actually understand what 'real' 4k textures even refer to?

  • Backup software recommendation?
  • Bvckup (not a typo)

    Made by a little Swiss company, extremely light but very competent. Stays completely out of your way unless it absolutely must get your attention (which is usually never).

    I think it's paid only but it's very reasonable. Works great in intermittent situations, I. E. It won't blow up if it tries to run a scheduled backup and the source or target is disconnected etc... Works very well for me for a decade.

  • Elon Musk’s new xAI company launches to “understand the true nature of the universe”
  • I'm not so sure we're missing that much personally, I think it's more just sheer scale, as well as the complexity of the input and output connections (I guess unlike machine learning networks, living things tend to have a much more 'fuzzy' sense of inputs and outputs). And of course sheer computational speed; our virtual networks are basically at a standstill compared to the paralellism of a real brain.

    Just my thoughts though!

  • Vegan Diets Cut Emissions, Water Pollution and Land Use by 75%, Major Study Finds
  • Lived at a farm that got some organic farming approvals; it depends on the country. And perhaps even your region. In my country, you can get certain approvals/certifications for organic farming, and the regulations for that is very strict. Things like "chemical" (synthetic) pesticides are forbidden outright, so are strong fertilizers etc. This has government oversight, so, there are randomized sampling and testing done on approved entities (farms, companies).

    Sadly this often leads to higher costs and more land use. Like it or not, a lot of the things forbidden do lead to much higher yields etc. The end result is higher prices; organic (certified) products are quite expensive here.

  • 3nm Zen 5 by 2024?
  • While true that the x nm nomenclature doesn't match physical feature size anymore, it's definitely not just marketing bs. The process nodes are very significant and very (very) challenging technological steps, that yield power efficiency gains in the dozens of % usually.

  • [HN] 100x Faster Than Wi-Fi: Light-Based Networking Standard Released
  • Part of the advertised benefit is that it is indeed blocked by walls and such, allowing very fine-grained segmentation of access. The idea is that you'll just have more "access points" wherever you want coverage, so, every room etc. But within one room, I believe reflections will allow some propagation, so that things like briefly blocking the direct line of sight won't actually drop the signal. Also it's all in infrared, so not visible to us at all.

    Now, to be clear, I am sceptical, as an electronics engineer I can see many challenges here. But I can also see that there are solutions to those problems; it will just take time. The advantages, where relevant, are really big.

  • Elon Musk’s new xAI company launches to “understand the true nature of the universe”
  • To me, what is surprising is that people refuse to see the similarity between how our brains work and how neural networks work. I mean, it's in the name. We are fundamentally the same, just on different scales. I belive we work exactly like that, but with way more inputs and outputs and way deeper network, but fundamental principles i think are the same.

  • Tips for some easy indoor plants?

    We have literally not a single plant in our apartment, and I'm sick of it! We need some green! But I have no idea what to start with.

    FWIW we're in the far nordics near the arctic circle, so conditions in places like windows vary quite wildly throughout the year, from occasionaly hot and long summer days to cold and very short winter days.

    Not really fuzzed about beautiful flowers, just leaves, vines, will keep us happy. Maybe succulents?

    Would appreciate any advice :)

    3
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)HA
    Haatveit @beehaw.org
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