Progress

Work, then fell ill again. Annoying.

I finally started pulling data sources into Prometheus. I still think that the pull model of Prometheus is the wrong one, and that endpoints should at least be able to push data as well. One problem is that I want to attach devices to my network that will push events when they are there. Since my network is DHCP-based, it's hard and unnecessary to know the IP addresses beforehand. Names are hard, too, because many devices don't have hostnames, and they've not worked reliably for me on a home network, like, ever.
So, still considering VictoriaMetrics for that.

Oh wow, I installed Victoria and it is so much better than Prometheus. I'll try it out more in the next few days, but I already like it so much more. And it has everything.

Articles

• Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant
• Selfish AI -- GarfieldTech
• Cholesterol-lowering effects of oats induced by microbially produced phenolic metabolites in metabolic syndrome: a randomized controlled trial -- Nature Communications: While the analysis is impressive here (they threw every device they had at it), the study is IMHO still questionable for a few reasons: (1) two participants from the critical group withdrew, giving us n=14, which is really low. (2) More importantly, you cannot conclude that eating oats specifically did this, because this hypothesis was not tested against “any intervention does this” (because the control diet was not specified very well), and especially “any intervention that removes some component from a typical western diet that is not present in oatmeal” which should be the correct null hypothesis. It sounds much less likely that “oats did this” than “eating no fat/glucose/whatever did this”. And (3) the press release mentions “They also lost two kilos in weight on average and their blood pressure fell slightly.” which would be a fantastic effect size for a simple single two-day intervention; this indicates that many participants were already on a diet or trying to lose weight. So I'm skeptical. I realise that the paper is not meant for the general public and the main points are very technical in nature, and I can't dispute those as a mere amateur. And meh, I'm going to try it anyway.
• What’s up with all those equals signs anyway? – Random Thoughts
• The Everdeck: A Universal Card System – The Wrong Tools
• archive.today is directing a DDOS attack against my blog – Gyrovague
• Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of my First Hardware Product
• Voxtral transcribes at the speed of sound. -- Mistral AI
• 221 Cannon is Not For Sale
• Cable lacing - Wikipedia
• ⇆ bidicalc
• Incidents of sudden death during restraint of agitated individuals in Sweden between 1992 and 2024 - Tyr - Journal of Forensic Sciences - Wiley Online Library
• Wirth's Revenge
• A Broken Heart - Allen Pike
• A Website To End All Websites -- Henry From Online
• How it feels to play AAA games : r/Gamingcirclejerk
• Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » The time I didn’t meet Jeffrey Epstein
• Tower of Flaws: Dismantling Tower of Fantasy's Anti-Cheat Driver While Waiting for The Game to Install -- Vespalec
• Häusliche Gewalt in der Schweiz: Zahlen zeigen Herkunft und Geschlecht
• The RCE that AMD won't fix! -- MrBruh's Epic Blog
• My Ridiculously Robust Photo Management System (Immich Edition) – Jaisen Mathai
• I've been writing ring buffers wrong all these years
• VeggieTales co-creator Phil Vischer says the vegetables are not Christian: fanfics clashing with each other are always hilarious
• At Last, Hydrofoils - by Andrew Miller - Changing Lanes
• Where did all the starships go? -- Datawrapper Blog
• Can Claude teach me to make coffee? — LessWrong: no.

Games

• Strange Jigsaws: how wonderfully weird!

Other media

• Seven Dials: it was nice, but these new detective series try to go for impressive much more than they go for surprising, so that's a bit odd.
• John Wick: finally watched this by-now quite-old action banger. If you take it as an action banger, heavily relying on comic visuals, it's good. Also, reading up on it on IMDB, the suggestion of the movie bosses that “the dog should stay alive” is hilarious!
• Slow Horses, Season 2, still great as ever. Still frustrating that the slow horses don't realise things as quickly as the viewer can...
• The wild rise of OpenClaw... - YouTube
• The Hairy Ball Theorem - YouTube
• Main Quests Are Outdated - YouTube
• Building a Functional LEGO Typewriter - YouTube
• SOLSTICE - 5 - YouTube
• The Engineer who invented the Mars Rover Suspension...in his garage - YouTube
• Bringing Oslo’s Medieval Ruins To Life in UE5 - YouTube
• RCAF Cormorant helicopter medevac from a cargo ship at night. - YouTube
• 2025's Biggest Breakthroughs in Mathematics - YouTube
• Toothless Gears Make Much More Torque Than Conventional Ones, Here's How. Cycloid Drive Explained - YouTube
• Spinning Top Mk.26 -- DIAMOND - YouTube
• What Standing On A Halo Ring Actually Looks Like - YouTube: this does not take into account atmospheric effects, and it also doesn't do anything with its model, like figuring out how big the other Halo's rings would have to be.