Notices by Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io), page 3

And so #FOSDEM 2024 is over. Phew! 😌

Kudos to the net admins who kept the WiFi mesh running smoothly across dozens of rooms and hallways packed with Linux nerds. Anyone who has experience scaling networks knows that conferences are a torture scenario for wireless infrastructure.

@giomba @giuliof

Still completely unescorted, we quietly step into The Hemicycle, the de-facto seat of the European Parliament 😲

https://visiting.europarl.europa.eu/en/visitor-offer/brussels/hemicycle

Next, my travel mate @giomba and another Italian by the handle giuliof gave a really interesting talk on their joint effort to reverse engineer the Sanco 8003, an obscure 8-bit platform. #retrocomputing

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2008-a-journey-documenting-the-sanco-8003-computer/

Inside the visitor center, we're welcomed by the flags of all member countries... except for Ukraine ☹️

One particular flag caught my attention :amiga:
#Amiga

#ChatGPT believes it's just a coincidence that the #Amiga Boing Ball appears in the middle of Croatia's national flag, not an official endorsement of the best computer EVER :amiga:

Our "self-guided tour" starts.with an elevator ride to floor 4.

Nobody is escorting us... what if we pushed 2 or 5? ...and why isn't there a 3rd floor?

Also, why are all controls duplicated except for the "close door" button? 🤷

@penguin42 Maybe, but what about the absurd layout of the floor buttons? 4, 5... 0... 2.

Next, my travel mate giomba and another Italian by the handle giuliof gave a really interesting talk on their joint effort to reverse engineer the Sanco 8003, an obscure 8-bit platform. #retrocomputing

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2008-a-journey-documenting-the-sanco-8003-computer/

Oh wow, have I missed the big news? 🇺🇦

Today we're visiting the European Parliament.

Access to the main building is surprisingly easy: no armed guards, no anti-tank barriers... any random US Embassy typically has more security measures, and the US Capitol was over the top even before the January 6th 2021 mob attack.

@alxlg Ugh. We passed by the exact same square. You can still see the tracks of the tractors.

If the farmers were looking for our sympathy, this is not the way.

@alxlg Actually, I'm not sure: I've been away for ~16 years, and I haven't been keeping up with news about Italy or Europe.

I read they've been told to set aside 4% of the land every year for regeneration. But I have no idea whether this is actually a good idea, and what the farmers would do instead.

@alxlg The cost of leaving 4% of the soil unproductive is clear to anyone, but I still don't understand the benefit: was it done just to piss the farmers, or is there a public benefit that must be weighted against the cost? Do farmers bear the costs without any benefits for them?

I entered the #Retrocomputing devroom too late for the talk on the PiStorm, a new CPU accelerator card for your old #Amiga 500.

Eat your hat, John! :amiga:

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1742-pistorm-the-evolution-of-an-open-source-amiga-accelerator/

I don't understand why #Mozilla didn't switch to Quiche, a full QUIC + HTTP/3 stack entirely written in #Rust and actively maintained by #Cloudflare.

I picked Quiche in 2021 to implement DNS-over-HTTP3 (DoH3) on Android, and it was small and easy to embed into the existing C++ codebase of the Android DNS resolver.

https://github.com/cloudflare/quiche

I'm in the #Mozilla room for a talk on the performance of #Firefox's HTTP/3 stack.

An #AMD engineer in the audience mentioned that #Framework will soon release proof-of-concept Coreboot firmware for their AMD laptops.

It's not yet an end-user thing due to missing power management, which is a showstopper for a laptop.

The only reason I haven't already switched to a nice Framework laptop was the proprietary BIOS, but with official support from AMD it won't take long... hopefully 🙏

I watched #3mdeb's preso on the status of #coreboot for #AMD motherboards.

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2936-open-source-firmware-status-on-amd-platforms-2024-5th-edition/

@globalc 😂