I’m a robotics researcher. My interests include cybersecurity, repeatable & reproducible research, as well as open source robotics and rust programing.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I top linked the most recently published video mostly for the introductory breakdown in ternary logic equivalence, but the interview with the ternary researcher, Dr Bos, also linked in the description above includes a number of corrections and accurate description of the subject.

    Yeah, definitely not a lost art or anything, as physical ternary signals already have applications in communication like high data rate interfaces. Still, would be interesting to see ternary expand into logic domains with emerging developments in TCMOS research.

















  • If you just want to quickly create a local python develop environment on the side using Python module metadata, installing uv from nixpkgs, and enabling nix-ld to run pre-compiled binaries from PyPI keeps things simple, and replicating the same virtual python environment workflow you to have on any other distribution:

    https://discourse.nixos.org/t/i-want-understanding-nix-packages-and-flake-basics/67365/3

    If you wanted to package a python module for nix or for proper distribution via nixpkgs, you’d want to add a nix derivation file that encapsulates all the inputs, i.e. software building materials (SBOM). There are existing nix library functions that can automate most of the packaging, not unlike Debian macros:

    https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Python

    The second approach is more rigorous, and combined with something like flakes for pinning the exact hash for all inputs via lock file ensures reproducibility, like when sharing with other nix users. While as the first approach is more subject to your current system, i.e. linking to whatever system wide libraries are presently installed, but it’s less upfront effort to reuse existing python-package-managers than to nixify everything.


  • I’ll preface that NixOS may not be for everyone, as deviating from a conventional hierarchical file system is a radical departure from conventional distributions; but for those that want precise control over their system environment, it has a good deal of appeal.

    For example, I appreciate being able to use the latest bleeding release of a number of tools while sticking with older trusted versions of other utilities, but if both relied upon different versions of similar dependencies, such package conflicts can be troublesome to resolve, as few Linux package managers gracefully deal with multi version installs.

    For NixOS using the nix store, installing leaf packages that traditionally conflict is trivial, and as a user, I can spend less time managing every transitive dependency in order to use the software I want. Not having to wait for a disjointed ecosystem of packages to synchronize around dependencies, or resorting to compromise in package version selection is very liberating.

    The functional language and documentation for nix itself is a bit quirky, as I wish it was stronger typed, but being able to declaratively express and version control my setup across workstations has been a time saver; installing/configuring something once and then have-done with it.









  • Yeah, any details published so far have been rather vague. I like the prospect of writing my backend UI logic in a memory safe language, but that falls short of benefiting from doing so end to end.

    Supposedly Qt would be in a decent position to use their own static analysis and testing frameworks for hardening such bridge interfaces, but using a memory safe system programming language for everything would be ideal. Are there any Rust based UI projects that are looking at ISO certification to ease integration as a Software of Unknown Pedigree?







  • Ah man, I’m with a project that already uses a poly repo setup and am starting an integration repo using submodules to coordinate the Dev environment and unify with CI/CD. Sub modules have been great for introspection and and versioning, rather than relying on some opaque configuration file to check out all the different poly repos at build time. I can click the the sub module links on GitHub and redirect right to the reference commit, while many IDEs can also already associate the respective git tag for each sub module when opening from the super project.

    I was kind of bummed to hear that working trees didn’t have full support with some modules. I haven’t used working trees with this super project yet, but what did you find about its incompatibility with some modules? Are there certain porcelain commands just not supported, or certain behaviors don’t work as expected? Have you tried the global git config to enable recursive over sub modules by default?