K‮ly‬e @khird@qoto.org

Just learned the specs for both MBR and GPT flavours of partition table, and rolled my own in a hex editor to solve a problem that `fdisk` and `parted` weren't able to handle. It's hard to express how pumped I was when this box booted, but I think Andy Weir did a pretty good job in "The Martian":

> **LOG ENTRY: SOL 211**
> I am smiling a great smile. The smile of a man who ****ed with his car and *didn't break it*. This is considerably more rare than you might think.

I don't understand recipes that start off with
step 1: preheat oven
steps 2-5: make dough
step 6: chill dough overnight
and the actual baking starts around step 8 or 9.
Clearly I'm not gonna run the oven all night. Is this just to make a point about "read all directions before diving in"? A prank?

It gives the impression that nobody bothered to proofread the thing and makes it really hard for me to trust that it'll turn out well.

Could someone kindly explain what the advantage is, from the employer's perspective, of locking out workers who have given notice of an imminent strike? Or, from the union's perspective, why this is a problem and worth complaining about? I understand that in general, a lockout is a way to put pressure on the labour force by denying them the opportunity to earn, but in such a case, the workers already announced their intention to forgo that opportunity.

For example, here's an airline doing this: https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/news/2023/the-westjet-group-issues-lockout-notice-in-response-to-alpa-s-st

And here's a port authority doing it (and then rescinding the lockout when the strike was disallowed by the regulator) :
https://www.portvancouver.com/about-us/information-updates/port-of-vancouver-operations-update-58/

#labour #labor #law #labourlaw #laborlaw

Is there a well-known name for the multiplicative equivalent to the absolute value function?

The absolute value function f(x), for real x, is the identity operation f(x) = x for x greater than the additive identity (zero), but it's the additive inverse f(x) = -x for x less than the additive identity.

I'm interested in the function g(x) over the positive reals that is the identity operation for x greater than the *multiplicative* identity (one), but the *multiplicative* inverse x⁻¹ for x less than the multiplicative identity.

I don't need g to take on any particular value for negative x, much less complex x, but I think the most natural extension would be that the function's rotationally symmetrical about the origin (an odd function, so g(-x) = -g(x)).

Taking the current fad for heat pumps one step further, is there a reason we couldn't have other appliances hooked into circuits of cold/hot/return pipes carrying a refrigerant or coolant throughout the house? For example, your refrigerator or water heater would be just a passive heat exchanger with a thermostat to open and close a valve when necessary.

In the case of a refrigerator, this would mean that in summer, the heat gets pumped to the water heater or directly outdoors, rather than getting pumped into your kitchen by the refrigerator and then pumped outdoors by the A/C. And in winter, the waste heat gets pumped into your HVAC to heat the whole house and not just the kitchen.

In the case of the water heater, this would mean that in summer, you're scavenging heat into your water that would be dumped outdoors by a traditional A/C. In winter, you'd be sucking heat in from the outdoors and from your fridge, and only having to run a heating element to make up the difference when necessary.

Diagrams to illustrate are mine. Yes I know the heat exchangers would be counter-current, but I tried to draw them as simply as possible.

Anyone know if it's possible to generate #DNS64 entries locally on #OpenWRT? The service I use (at 2606:4700:4700::64) seems to be misbehaving, but DNS is reported to be fully functional on the Cloudflare status page. It seems like #dnsmasq ought to have all the information it needs to generate an AAAA record corresponding to the A record, so I could just use standard #DNS upstream, but I can't figure out how to do it.

I have an unopened soft drink can sitting in a fairly cold part of my home, and at night it's now cold enough to reduce the pressure of the carbon dioxide inside the can to almost exactly atmospheric pressure. Each time the heat cycled on or off, it caused a metallic ping as the slightly domed lid inverted to equalize the pressure.

Wasn't until this morning that I figured out where that noise was coming from.