Skip Navigation

Saigonauticon

@ Saigonauticon @voltage.vn

Posts

11
Comments

458
Joined

3 yr. ago

2y ago

What is your most embarrassing "ate the onion" moment?
Jump
Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago
I only occasionally see that here in Asia. It exists, but I feel like it's much less. I immigrated here maybe 12 years ago from the West. The overall level of violence is much lower than I grew up with (even in Canada).
Most young people I know consider handling guns more of a chore. In Vietnam, learning to disassemble, clean, maintain, and reassemble an AK-47 is a mandatory class. My wife got top score :)
Anyway, we stumbled on a great way to make guns uncool, I think. Personal possession is illegal here except for shotguns, it's for some very specific scenario that I don't exactly recall. I knew of some remote workplaces with one, in case of wild animals. We get some, but not many, illegal firearms.

2y ago

Wwyd if you were given a pocket dimension 3m cubed?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Some ideas:

A fast way to dig holes, if 'soil' or 'stone' is an object.
Annoy physics teachers -- move in and out to drive a piston. Perpetual motion!
Moving day is easy.
Server farm.
Safe house.
Is momentum conserved? Not sure how general relativity would work. Win a Nobel Prize.
Building stuff in space just got a lot easier and safer. 27 cubic meters of free payload!

2y ago

People who had a quarter-life crisis in their 20's, did you do right to stress?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

starting from experience

That does work better, I think!

2y ago

What other languages should I learn?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

That would be funny, although I think it may have been closed down and converted to some other purpose. It was a vast concrete sarcophagus of a building. No windows or proper heating. Weird cardboard dividers for walls, so all classrooms could hear all nearby classrooms. Bizarre skywells on the upper floors with no cages or guard rails.

It was really a building suitable for any purpose except a school :D

2y ago

People who had a quarter-life crisis in their 20's, did you do right to stress?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Haha, yeah...

I did the classic overachiever route and finished my thesis pretty fast, focused on a specific career. Then still ended up with a shitty full-time job, so took on three more jobs and started a nonprofit. All that still got me exactly nowhere. I was ridiculously stressed. One time I didn't sleep for 3 days and had to check in to the hospital.

Hopefully this offers some comfort. The things you consider mistakes, are the things I wish I had done. Even spending more time with my parents. So perhaps nothing is so serious :)

My "nuclear option" was immigration. I sold everything and (just barely) got a business license in the developing world. I'm basically Ozymandias from watchmen, but less fit and I don't own tights. Also none of my friends are blue. Splicing genes and splitting atoms, I will admit to though.

Anyway the point is, what matters is what happens next. I don't recommend immigrating to the developing world (it's acutely distressing), but it's surprising how much we can influence the outcomes of our lives if we radically commit to a course of action. If the exact details of your course of action aren't optimal (or even borderline insane), I think that's OK, it's being radically committed to improving your future that matters. The context isn't exactly irrelevant, but I think it's secondary.

So no need to stress. Better to spend that energy doing. Anything reasonable will do. Start a side hustle, learn programming, design websites, learn to do taxes for yourself and others. Degrees are OK but I don't value them any more personally. Get used to starting at square one over and over -- it's a good habit and you will eventually know how to do many things. People who can do many things are rare and valuable.

2y ago

Other than filling with plaster and taking a cast of your bits, what use do you suggest for large glass jars?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Not exactly! I just sort of take finely chopped apples (for pectin), onions, mango, and dried raisins or dried apricots. Then I boil, adding (a little) vinegar over time until it looks like chunky jam. Then I flavor it with soup stock and cinnamon to taste. Some nutmeg too, if you like. Finally I adjust acidity and sweetness with more vinegar or some sugar -- but that's usually not necessary if I add things in slowly.

If it's too acidic, boil it longer, adding a little water if it gets dry. Vinegar (acetic acid) is a gas and will evaporate out slowly this way.

Mix frequently.

2y ago

Other than filling with plaster and taking a cast of your bits, what use do you suggest for large glass jars?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

I save them up all year, and come Christmas / Lunar New Year, I bake cookies then hand out jars filled with cookies to coworkers and neighbors.

It turns out that my wife and I consume exactly enough jam in a year to balance out the jar egress for the maximum number of social connections we can sustain.

If I have a spare, I might make mango chutney. It doesn't need to be vacuum sealed if you just make one jar and eat it reasonably soon.

I suppose you could engineer them to be solar garden lights too. There ought to be enough room for the panel on top of the lid, a battery and circuit on the underside, and then you hang an LED in there.

2y ago

What are some things you can/should cheap out on?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Just another day running a business in the developing world, haha. You win some, you lose some :)

2y ago

Good recommendations for documentaries that can be watched on YouTube?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

The only videos that YouTube manages to convince me to watch are by clickspring. So satisfying to watch metal being machined, and much to learn too.

2y ago

What are some things you can/should cheap out on?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Yup, I do the same -- although my remote desktop is just SSH, so even truly ancient stuff is completely fine. I've been looking at getting a portable terminal as an alternative to even a laptop, which is a bit of a pain to lug around if I'm on vacation.

This technique failed disastrously one time though. A billing dispute between the person renting me office space and the building owner meant my AI workstation got seized for a year once. That was a real pain -- I never expected to see it again. Thankfully it did return to my possession. Eventually.

2y ago

What other languages should I learn?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

I've always thought that learning the native language of a developing country would be a huge asset. Very few people do so, and outsourcing has a huge cost differential, so it opens up unusual career moves to capture that growth.

Hilariously, 12 year old me suggested this on the "what 3rd language would you like to learn" form in high school and somehow got in trouble for it. I guess they thought I was joking. Perhaps the joke was on them though, I immigrated to Vietnam and own a (small) tech company now.

2y ago

What are some things you can/should cheap out on?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Free computer operating systems are great these days.

I regularly spend hours designing electronics to be cheaper. Not worse -- just cheaper. Electronic components sometimes vary in price by two orders of magnitude for the same performance, so it's worth cramming datasheets in your head as a professional or hobbyist.

For tools, I've found good midrange Chinese brands, and stuck to them. I could never afford things like Tektronix and so on.

I don't strictly require clothing to be cheap, but I do require it to be fungible -- this works out similarly though. When I find something that's good value for money and looks good, I buy a bunch and rotate them. That way I don't have to think about what to wear, and it always looks decent.

I also prefer cheap laptops. I don't need a supercomputer to work. When I do need a supercomputer, I rent one from google cloud for a few dollars an hour.

2y ago

Idea for niche communities

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

I keep forgetting Lemmy has voting features. I never used them on Reddit.

Anyway, the key is attracting people who generate content. Finding people who consume content is comparatively easy. A good way to start is to generate content yourself, and leveraging that to convince other content creators to work alongside you. It's a lot of work, takes time, and you can't fake it.

I'm one of those weirdos that is happy to generate content somewhere like Lemmy even if no one sees it. I think I have two comments on my instance (and as far as I know, I run the only instance in my country, or at the very least the first). Although content only comes through when I have time to do interesting things. Feel free to link to it if that's helpful to you, although it's very engineering-focused.

I think that long term, native content is the only solution -- things that originate here. Other platforms can scramble to repost our stuff if they want.

2y ago

Any Lemmy community suggestions for solar lights?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

My understanding is that the purpose of the off switch is to disconnect the battery from everything so you can put the device in storage. The battery cannot charge (or discharge, much) when it is disconnected. This function is necessary so that the battery doesn't become permanently dead in the store/warehouse before the device is sold to you. Adding in the feature as you describe it would cost more -- profit margins on this kind of device are razor-thin so this is not likely a viable product -- and there's not much demand for garden lights in winter, so economies of scale would be difficult to achieve.

You could design it yourself to work the way you want though! It would not be that hard or expensive, probably you could fit it in to your current devices. A few ideas come to mind, although they all require some OK programming skills and basic PCB design skills.

These devices also tend to be highly cost-optimized -- as a 'cheap hack' you could try taking two apart and putting both panels on a single device (in parallel, NOT in series. Be sure to observe polarity). It's very likely that the panel and battery capacity are engineered to be just barely enough to serve as a summer garden light at the latitude of the target demographic (again, razor-thin margins). This is most likely the fundamental reason the light does not behave the way you want it to.

An additional consideration is that the performance of many rechargeable cell types decreases with temperature.

Anyway, I hope that, er... sheds some light on the issue!

2y ago

How many days do your wear your socks before changing them?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

NaN. I live in the tropics, socks aren't really a thing.

If I have to wear silly formal shoes for a function or whatever, I wear them maybe two hours.

2y ago

What was the last time you clicked on an ad?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Oh yeah, all the time. Not for anything I need though. Just for private jets, million dollar pieces of industrial mining equipment, and centrifuges.

Ubiquitous surveillance means constant opportunities to provide wrong data.

2y ago

Why people gave up using linux?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Employers requiring that I use Windows on a computer they provide has been a thing, once or twice. It's their computer, so no argument from me.

Nowadays that would be pretty weird thing to do though. I mean, I'll gladly do it if you're paying me by the hour, I guess.

I'm actually looking at rolling Linux exclusively at some clients. The employees are working through a web app. All the ads, interruptions, and poorly tested updates in Windows waste time, but not enough to be a problem worth solving on their own. It's managing software licenses that's just too much of a pain when we need to suddenly bring on more staff (it's a small business so no dedicated IT department). Easier to just have a standard Linux image that I show up and spam onto a dozen hard drives. I'm available for maintenance, but it's never actually been required.

2y ago

A time traveller comes back from 50 years in the future. You have 3 hours with them. What do you do?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

Well, if they are over 50, then how could you have killed them if they are still alive?

That's going to be a headache for the courts, to say the least. The real victims of time travel are the bureaucrats.

2y ago

A time traveller comes back from 50 years in the future. You have 3 hours with them. What do you do?

Jump

Saigonauticon @voltage.vn 2y ago

I ask them about the history of time travel and either listen to them, or accept the recording they give me, and carefully record it myself. Then I ignore them and try to metagame time travel, assuming they've set up some form of time loop.

The first step is to buy lottery tickets (with choices based on a quantum RNG), and if I win, buy more lottery tickets until I have an arbitrary amount of wealth. If I'm in a time loop, there will exist an iteration where I win all attempted lottery instances (note that only non-deterministic RNGs will work for this, like the one I have on my desk). I then use that wealth and my foreknowledge to adjust the future history of time travel such that I exclusively control the technology. Then I send someone back in time with the recorded history (now incorrect) of time travel.

That ought to destabilize any loop they're trying to set up after a finite number of iterations, and wrap my loop around it. If you're a time traveler looking to prevent me from doing this, I accept cash, money, and filthy lucre. Just make sure the dates on the bills make sense for this period.