2025-04-04 04:01:32
This is not to be confused with the Firth of Forth, as described in Wikipedia:
Discover the World of Lviv Croissants
That’s clearly the wrong article I pasted from my Good News Train. But still, I would LOVE to try that!
The Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe) is a firth in Scotland, an inlet of North Sea that separates Fife to its north and Lothian to its south. Further inland, it becomes the estuary of the River Forth and several other rivers
As I said, nothing to do with the date. Which makes this post, and its entire premise, completely pointless. Here’s a final sentence.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-04.
2025-04-04 03:58:27
To make up for yesterday, I thought we all needed some good news. Here’s what I’ve read this week:
Ruben Schade got a Commodore 116. Apparently he was waiting for one for almost two decades, that’s wild. Whoa, so this is what it’s like to talk in the third person.
Kyiv Independent: Lviv Croissants to open in South Korea. This is so heartwarming to see, and I’d love to try them! East and South East Asian markets love European cafe culture, from my experience.
Kyiv Independent: $18 million ‘Ukraine2EU’ program launched to support Ukraine’s eventual European Union accession. Speaking of Ukraine, this would be huge. Their flags look great together too.
Planet KDE: KStars v3.7.6 is Released. My love of desktop planatarium software started with TheSky for Windows 3.1 before I even started school. I’m so happy to see this open source project continue to grow.
Phoronix: FreeBSD On Laptops Sees New Power Management Driver, WiFi 4 / WiFi 5 Progress. I’m keen to see how this goes. I’ve defaulted to using NetBSD on my personal laptops, but I’d love to dual boot them with FreeBSD again as well in the future.
Deutsche Welle: A new drug makes your blood toxic to mosquitoes. Nitisinone kills mosquitoes, but is non-toxic to humans. Wow!
Railway Technology: Revolutionary new solution eliminates complications associated with VLDs. Technically “partner content”, but this was a fascinating report into developments with Voltage Limiting Devices (VLDs). A new device would see these be able to be reconnected remotely, which would cut maintenance costs and reduce passenger delays.
SoraNews24: Rare Mos Burger vending machine sells items not found in restaurants. I copped heat for my defence of MOS Burger earlier this year, but I absolutely love them! I’m sorely tempted to seek this machine out in Tokyo if it takes me all day later this month. Maybe (cough).
SciTechDaily: Universal Coronavirus Vaccine Breakthrough: A Single Shot That Could Protect You From COVID, MERS, and the Common Cold. Researches found that viruses and certain bacteria use sugar molecules to hide from immune systems. Targeted vaccines against this would offer “one shot” protection. I’m rolling up my sleeve.
The Japan Times: Hokuriku Shinkansen extension marks first anniversary. Public transport expansion is always great news! They even served festive steamed buns! I love reading articles like this.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-04.
2025-04-03 10:59:46
Last week I finally got to ride in the new NSW Mariyung intercity express trains on a beautiful (cough) drizzly afternoon! They entered service from Sydney in December last year, and while I’d seen some of them flying past, I’d never got to see one up close.
Unlike the ancient V sets these trains are replacing, the dimensions and fitout of each carriage are more in line with standard Sydney suburban services. There are large doors at either end of each carriage that enter into a vestibule area with accessible seating, and areas for bathrooms and bicycle parking. These are much easier to use in peak hour than those tiny thoroughfares and manual doors on the V sets.
There are still doors between each carriage like the suburban trains, though I think they make more sense here. Intercity Sydney trains have designated quiet carriages—which the travelling public even respect sometimes—so this keeps the noise from other carriages from leaking across.
The walls have a dark grey colour scheme compared to the bright white on the suburban carriages, which gives the space a calmer, more relaxed feel. I’ve often said this is something Singapore’s Changi Airport gets right and most Western airports don’t, but that’s a topic for another time. I’m fascinated by colour theory, and genuinely think they can make or break the ergonomics of a space in a way I don’t think a lot of people appreciate.
Heading downstairs, the middle of the carriage is your standard Sydney double-decker layout, albeit with four seats across instead of five for more comfortable journeys on longer distances. We can see the same station indicator boards are used on these newer trains, and thankfully the coveted “nook” seat has been retained:
The seats are wide and comfortable, though I miss being able to reverse them to point in the direction of travel. The tray tables and powerpoints were a nice upgrade too. If you look closely in the photo below, you can just make out one of the aforementioned V sets and their tiny doors!
We live close enough to Sydney to take the regular suburban trains, but getting the express to town on one of these was a lovely experience. Kudos to NSW TrainLink, you did good here :). It’s still far from perfect, but there’s no question Sydney has the best public transport in the country.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-03.
2025-04-03 07:20:48
I love blogging! Writing about a couple of things that interest me every day or so is one of the highlights of my life. That so many of you now read my ramblings as well is that much more lovely. I don’t dare take it for granted.
Unfortunately, there are also topics that impact me, but that I don’t want to give any more oxygen. For a few years it was blockchain, in part because I had to deal with so much of it from potential clients at work. It was an unmitigated disaster, and didn’t even resolve any of the problems it purported to solve. Fraud, transparency, accountability, lack of government intervention (insofar as people thought this was a desirable trait), it was all a wash… and a predictable one too for anyone with the most basic understanding of mathematics, finance, and history.
I felt this compulsion to write massive long screeds about blockchain, about crypto-“currency”, about the utter nonsense that was NFTs, and of their negative impacts and pain they wrought. How the tech had done more to jade me on the tech industry than even its nonchalant, cavalier attitude to digital privacy in the twenty-first century.
But during the peak it felt as though I was shouting into the void. Discussing the topic left me feeling frustrated, despondent, and tired. You have to look out for number one first, so the saying goes, so I made the executive decision to not air anything more about it, for my own sake. It was a selfish decision given that we needed as many voices pushing back on this crap as we could get, but it was one I felt I had to make.
🌲 🌲 🌲
genAI is the next chapter in this calamitous cavalcade of computerised crapulance. This technology, whatever perceived or incidental benefit it has, slops out such enormous and uncaptured externalities that it affects all of us. The slave labour in Africa used to classify data. Our servers creaking under the load of their indiscriminate scrapers, to say nothing of our costs. Open source projects—the ones that deliver so much of the code necessary to make them work—being washed of their licences and clogged with spam. Creative outlets being forced to close under mountains of spam and genAI slop. I waste so much of my job now dealing with automated abuse alerts it beggars belief. I could link to examples of each of these, but I’m tired, and I’m sure you’ve read the same stories.
The financials underpinning these models and companies also aren’t sustainable. The poster children of the movement are burning through billions of dollars of investor funds and capital a year, and have yet to turn a profit for this alleged transformative tech. Some of their backers have even scaled back their data centre rollouts. The fundamentals simply aren’t there, though my ethical concerns and frustrations would still exist even if they did solve the financial problems they claim.
It also didn’t need to be this way; the idea of inevitability is a con peddled by those who want to push their narrow, self-serving view of the future. The billions being spent researching and developing this tech could literally have been allocated in any other number of ways. Say, I dunno, like building out more clean energy, or throwing slavish amounts of money at RDNA to solve malaria, or… here’s an idea… paying the artists, musicians, and writers who’s work makes our lives worth living. What about those open source tools you use, how about throwing them a bone?
AI researches themselves are also fed up. I’ve received email from many of you frustrated that legitimate machine learning applications in scientific and medical research are being lumped in with slop generators and shitty “summarising” tools that absolutely don’t. Much as the blockchain bros tainted the innocuous and useful term crypto, so too have these charlatans with the concept of AI. And don’t get me started on the gamers who just want a bit of escapism after a hard and unforgiving day at work without scalped GPUs used instead to shit out industrial art simulacrums that are an offence to life itself. My god Miyazaki, I’m so, so sorry.
genAI is the most selfish technology I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I resent the mental CPU cycles I’ve spent thinking about it, how sycophantic and uncritical so many bloggers and journalists have been at discussing the tech’s problems (I’ve had to unsubscribe to a dishearteningly large number of them), and am frustrated that it reached such a boiling point again that I’ve felt compelled to write about it too.
Life is too short for this crap!
Back to BSD, coffee, retrocomputers, and travel soon; promise.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-03.
2025-04-02 05:41:10
Most of you are likely aware of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. If not, it grapples with the question of whether something is still the same object if all its parts have been replaced over time. In the original example, imagine if the sails were replaced with a new canvas, then over time the hull due to rotting wood. Is it the same ship, if it shares nothing physical with the original?
How people answer that question is interesting. My circle of family, friends, and colleagues over time are split between saying it is and it isn’t a new ship. Maybe have a think yourself where you land here. Or sail.
I’m sympathetic to both views. I can see the ship isn’t physically configured with any of the original components, even if replacements have been created that mimic their materials, behaviour, and appearance. I can see how puritans would claim it’s not the same ship from the moment a single thing is replaced, let alone half or most of the components. That’s why when people buy something precious to them, they may keep an extra copy locked away in “mint” condition.
Personally, is a word with ten letters. I lean towards saying it’s the same ship. It’s occupying the same space in about the same way. This is informed by the fact that some of those replacement parts did share the boat with original components at some point. These are two key attributes that separate a Ship of Theseus from a replica, which is its own distinct object with its own history. Granted this mental gymnastics’ only works if one projects context onto to the object, otherwise a ship with replaced components could be confused for a duplicate.
I started down this train of thought again recently after contrasing my recent experience seeing the NSWGR 3526 steam locomotive, and my lifelong dream purchase of a Commodore C116. Yes, I did it, I managed to think about Edwardian engineering and retrocomputers in the same sentence, and without any steampunk of any kind.
The steam locomotive is more than a century old, and has had numerous components rebuilt, upgraded, or entirely replaced. The locomotive could have sat static in a museum without fixes, but would never have operated again. This would have satisfied the objective Ship of Theseus, but the sights, sounds, and experience of witnessing that locomotive operating as she would have a hundred years ago was additive itself. The restoration work was done respectfully, and to an extent that people standing around us who were alive when she was in mainland service couldn’t wipe the smiles off their faces. This was the locomotive they grew up with.
By contrast, the Commodore 116 is entirely stock. It has had no modifications done, no upgrades, no replacements, and yet is fully functional in 2025 (a shocking achievement when you consider most computers aren’t designed to outlive a two-year warranty). I do admit it makes me feel great knowing this is the same physical basket of components that would have been assembled, bought, and used in 1984. Had there been a C116 that underwent significant rework, and a stock C116, I would likely choose the latter if I could afford it.
But keen-eyed readers among you may have spotted a small cheat in the photo of the C116: A RetroTINK 2x upscaler. I don’t have an original Commodore CRT (nor any CRTs on account of them giving me headaches today). But I’m able to use this machine, in its original condition, thanks to being able to pipe S-Video and audio out of the C116 and into a converter box. While the C116 is the original, how I’m using it certainly isn’t.
Despite the steam loco being modified, and the C116 running stock, a case could be made that the experience of the former is more authentic than the latter. Which to me gets to the core issue underlying the Ship of Theseus. To use another overused phrase, seeing is believing.
Uh oh, I can sense a part two.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-02.
2025-04-01 06:51:01
After months of saving and indecision, we’ve finally booked the hotels and flights:
Flying into Tōkyō, and spending a few days there. We generally prefer flying to Kansai because Ōsaka is our favourite Japanese city, but we got some jaw-dropping rates with JAL. Maybe it has something to do with the Expo in Ōsaka right now.
Taking the Hikari Shinkansen to Nagoya (it’s a bit cheaper than the Nozomi, and it’s pretty close) and staying there a week. I’ve only ever zipped past, so I’m keen to explore all the museums and the port.
Travelling on one of those slow tourist trains up to Takayama in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, and spending a few days hiking and exploring. This is the part I’m looking forward to the most.
Travelling further north to Takaoka in Toyama Prefecture to explore the Sea of Japan coast for a week for the first time. The plan is to do day trips to Imizu and greater Toyama city further east. There are a lot of… second hand hardware, book, and music stores up there too (cough).
Back to Tōkyō on the Hokuriku Shinkansen to hang out for a few more days, then flying out.
We still badly want to explore Hiroshima and Okinawa further south; not least because we know a few of you living down there! But the budget and timing didn’t work out this time.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-01.
