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maxmalkav commented on Things I learned from teaching (2023)   claytonwramsey.com/blog/l... · Posted by u/mooreds
throwaway2037 · 2 years ago

    > Nobody goes to office hours
This is rough. I was a student who really struggled with some courses during uni. I would estimate that 75% of professors that I visited were incredibly unwelcoming, no matter how much prep I had done before the visit. It really turned me off from asking for help. That said, I do believe that most of my uni professors were not passionate about teaching -- they wanted to do research, and a modicum of teaching was required for their role.

maxmalkav · 2 years ago
Reflecting on my own experience on both sides, I can tell a generational difference.

As student, research-focused professors and some old timers made you feel unwelcome in office hours, a mixture of “you are wasting my time” and “you should have put more work on this, I’ll just give you some hints so I can send you away quick”. Many had in common being from a generation and country where university access was not so normalized and accessible to all social strata, just graduating came many times with some sense of entitlement.

Some years later and I’m the one assisting students during office hours. I could already sense some generational change, with younger professors and assistants treating students more like equals. They were exceptions of course, we had younger assistants cargo culting the worst attitude parts of old timers (fun enough they were usually from kind of privileged background, families with ties to the field or even de same department). The result was students from other groups kind-of/secretly attending my office hours and the ones from other nice colleagues.

Academia is its own kind of hell :-)

maxmalkav commented on Why is Chile so long?   unchartedterritories.toma... · Posted by u/trevin
anthk · 2 years ago
If not utterly false and defaming. ANY educated Spanish speaker could talk to any other one from the whole Latin America in the spot. We are not talking about hicks with a deep and harsh accent such as some Andalusian farmer and some Northern Mexican paisano from Nowhereland. (Kinda like mixing an Appalachian and a Scottish).
maxmalkav · 2 years ago
The Internet seems like a small place, and lately, I always find you talking in a demeaning way about the South of Spain and/or its people. :-)

I usually wouldn't engage further (as most people don't when faced with your harsh statements), but as a "hick farmer from Andalusia" myself, and your history on this topic, it hits too close to home.

You probably think you don't need to, but maybe consider checking how you are perceived and how you come across to people when you write the way you do.

This is my last interaction with you here or in any of the other platforms where we cross paths.

maxmalkav commented on RegreSSHion: RCE in OpenSSH's server, on glibc-based Linux systems   qualys.com/2024/07/01/cve... · Posted by u/robinhoodexe
maxmalkav · 2 years ago
Quoting some ska tune in a SSH vulnerability report really caught me off ward, but I loved it.
maxmalkav commented on In Cleveland, mushrooms digest entire houses   bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/geox
CSMastermind · 2 years ago
The biology and evolutionary history of fungi is incredibly fascinating.

To my (admittedly layman) understanding, they're sort of life's premiere resource extractors. Their whole thing is breaking down things that other life can't, so it's not surprising at all that some species can consume oil.

We know they co-evolved with plants, and one theory suggests that fungi allowed plants to make the jump from water to land by using their hyphae to act as a proto-root system, unlock nutrients like phosphorus from the soil, and transport water, while early land plants provided sugars produced from photosynthesis in return.

One of the main differentiations that might have led to the split between proto-fungi and proto-animals is their nutrient acquisition strategy. The organism that would become fungi had extracellular digestion, while the organism that would become animals captured and ingested other organisms.

This split led to different approaches to cellular adhesion along with different developmental and signaling pathways (different strategies for achieving homeostasis for instance).

---

If you want to read about some really wild stuff, look up the Late Paleozoic era in the Carboniferous period. Basically plants evolved Lignin (wood) but there was nothing in the world that could break it down so it rapidly accumulated along with a hyperoxgenated atmosphere due to the extensive growth. This meant there were 8 foot long millipedes and dragonflies that size of crows flying around. There were also massive forest fires spanning the globe since fire was one of the only ways to get rid of the lignin until, eventually, some fungi evolved to take care of the problem.

maxmalkav · 2 years ago
> Basically plants evolved Lignin (wood) but there was nothing in the world that could break it down so it rapidly accumulated along with a hyperoxgenated atmosphere due to the extensive growth.

That was my understanding too until recently, when I have read in a couple of places that things might not have been like that. Checking the Wikipedia article about Carboniferous [1] it seems there is not consensus yet:

"There is ongoing debate as to why this peak in the formation of Earth's coal deposits occurred during the Carboniferous. The first theory, known as the delayed fungal evolution hypothesis, is that a delay between the development of trees with the wood fibre lignin and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading fungi gave a period of time where vast amounts of lignin-based organic material could accumulate. Genetic analysis of basidiomycete fungi, which have enzymes capable of breaking down lignin, supports this theory by suggesting this fungi evolved in the Permian. However, significant Mesozoic and Cenozoic coal deposits formed after lignin-digesting fungi had become well established, and fungal degradation of lignin may have already evolved by the end of the Devonian, even if the specific enzymes used by basidiomycetes had not. The second theory is that the geographical setting and climate of the Carboniferous were unique in Earth's history: the co-occurrence of the position of the continents across the humid equatorial zone, high biological productivity, and the low-lying, water-logged and slowly subsiding sedimentary basins that allowed the thick accumulation of peat were sufficient to account for the peak in coal formation."

One way or another, I find fascinating how different the planet has been along its geologic periods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Coal_formation

maxmalkav commented on Damn Small Linux 2024   damnsmalllinux.org/... · Posted by u/abbbi
bachmeier · 2 years ago
I just checked Wikipedia, and was surprised to see the original DSL only had releases for about 3.5 years.

> Though it may seem comparably ridiculous that 700MB is small in 2024 when DSL was 50MB in 2002

If you go all the way back to 2002, 50 MB for an old computer wasn't that small. I bought a new computer with 192 MB of RAM as late as 2005. My 32-bit, $400 discount laptop from 2009 has 4 GB of RAM, so 700 MB is reasonable.

maxmalkav · 2 years ago
IIRC 50MB was not the space needed in RAM but the size of the whole basic installation on disk
maxmalkav commented on Reviving decade-old Macs with antiX and MX Linux (2022)   sts10.github.io/2022/12/1... · Posted by u/indigodaddy
nottorp · 2 years ago
But those aren't that old. How about the PowerPC ones? :)

The collector in me still keeps a G5 iMac in sight on a desk. Don't think I've turned it on this year.

maxmalkav · 2 years ago
You may want to turn it on and check how it is doing, just in case. That model is infamously known for its bad capacitors and their tendency to bulge and die.

As a side note, I find OpenBSD the best modern OS for those old PowerPC machines. The main "problem" is the lack of modern web browsers, but it is not like the CPU can handle the modern web anyway :-)

maxmalkav commented on Raspberry Pi 5   raspberrypi.com/products/... · Posted by u/chabes
pjerem · 2 years ago
I hope they’ll reiterate the computer in keyboard form factor (pi 400). My son is 6 and is learning to read and the pi 400 looks like a perfect first computer.
maxmalkav · 2 years ago
I really like the form factor, if only there would be some off-the-shelf options for a mechanical keyboard version ..

I know there are plenty DIY projects for this (and the cyberdeck scene is a rabbit hole that I do not dare to go down), but it would be nice something more easily available.

maxmalkav commented on My Overkill Home Network   blog.networkprofile.org/m... · Posted by u/monstermunch
cjdell · 3 years ago
I also have mixed feelings. I stopped home labing because of the energy costs. I now have everything I need (HomeAssistant / NAS / Router) running on an old Dell Precision laptop. Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in!

I'm tempted by the new Alder Lake N100 mini PCs that are available on Chinese websites. But I need to wait until the laptop dies before I can justify it. It's not just about power consumption but the (hidden) cost of manufacturing. Make use of the stuff you already have before buying new stuff.

At least he had a big solar array...

maxmalkav · 3 years ago
I am a big fan of thin clients as servers. It is true you lose the "built-in console and UPS", but they usually come in very nice and compact form factor, many are fanless and consume 10~15W tops while being acceptably capable (in general much more than a RPi but with much better memory and storage specs)
maxmalkav commented on Cool, but obscure X11 tools (2019)   cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11... · Posted by u/RalfWausE
darkwater · 3 years ago
TIL about XLennart, which it's somehow funny but I still think is undeserved

On the other hand I knew XBill for decades and that was totally deserved.

maxmalkav · 3 years ago
I did not find the XLennart very graceful neither.

I admit I am also biased about the original XBill one.

maxmalkav commented on PhD Simulator   research.wmz.ninja/projec... · Posted by u/Smith42
maxmalkav · 3 years ago
"The only winning move is not to play."

u/maxmalkav

KarmaCake day105September 5, 2020View Original