h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

Positional-only parameters for Python https://lwn.net/Articles/785245/ #python

Watching the clouds... on another planet
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2019/curiosity-noctilucent-clouds.html #space

What do you do with a cyclotron you no longer need for science? You make music, of course!
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/upcycled-instrument-tied-to-auspicious-accelerator #science

The UK government wants to suspend parliament for 4 weeks. There is only 9 weeks until the brexit deadline. Parliament has been on summer holidays for 5 weeks and a leadership election for 8 weeks. More time off is a bad idea. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157 #ukpol

Wikidata, a spin-off from Wikipedia, knows lots of facts. Anyone can write queries, such as this list of people who have won both the Nobel Prize and IgNobel Prize: https://w.wiki/7Uz

Nerdcore rap music from MC Frontalot https://youtu.be/rjigODNy3jk #music

Art set in stone
https://naturalhistorymuseum.blog/2019/03/18/a-black-stone-from-derbyshire-turned-into-pieces-of-art-curator-of-petrology/

Need more RAM? If only you could compress pages of memory... but you can! I use zram (apt:zram-tools) everywhere. It takes some of your memory, makes it a ramdisk with compression, and mounts it as a swap disk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram #computing #linux

Easy, chilled out music with a science theme https://terralumina.bandcamp.com/album/terra-lumina #music

Gate Error 36 at London Underground stations
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2019/03/gate-error-36.html #london

We live in Memory
https://www.roborooter.com/post/1911/we-live-in-memory/ #computing

Massless particles in physics
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/massless-particles-cant-be-stopped #science

The modern Linux equivalent to .zip is .tgz, and it makes me happy that the program which makes them still supports -L, an option which lets you change the reel of magnetic tape part way through. https://linux.die.net/man/1/tar #computing

Placebos (can) work even when you don’t use them https://www.improbable.com/2019/03/28/placebos-can-work-even-when-you-dont-use-them-new-study/

crt.sh has a list of all recent ssl certificates which appear in the certificate transparency logs. https://crt.sh/?q=%25.buildmorebuslanes.com #networking

Epic music: playing Mega Man 2 while Bit Brigade play the soundtrack https://youtu.be/MUHlVdqRlPA #music

It's Early Harvest, when farmers harvest corn and celebrate the first loaves of bread from this years harvest. It's also a good time to collect blackberries and other wild berries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lammas #seasons

TCP keep alive works by re-sending the previous ack, even though no more data has been received. There is normally no response for ack packets with no data, but for keep-alives servers respond by also re-sending the previous ack. https://github.com/wireshark/wireshark/blob/178e7ce9a533ba9e5e152c9f7bc08f5ba8f25f0b/docbook/wsug_src/WSUG_chapter_advanced.adoc #networking