Heyy, just some guy floating around on the internet. Always down for a chat during my off-hours

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: April 5th, 2026

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  • Data processing in space can be useful, albeit not in the way that Musk seems to sell it. I spoke with some people from a space startup (edgx) at a jobfair in Belgium half a year ago.

    Their thing was that they did some data processing in space to cut down on bandwidth (so this is specifically for applications where satellites are a necessary component). I also remember specifically asking them about cosmic rays and they told me it’s definitely manageable because their computers fly in LEO. (They already have a computer in space)


  • Personally when I install some software I generally look at popularity (like stars if the code is hosted on Github), whether an audit has recently happened, it is recommended by someone I trust, and whether the permissions it needs are reasonable (I’m on Silverblue so I only install Flatpaks)

    When I used to use Arch I also looked at the pkgbuild beforehand since they’re generally fairly small en very human readable. I also looked at popularity there and whether the developer maintained an Arch package. But that obviously doesn’t say anything about the code itself.

    I definitely don’t consider myself non-techy since I’m doing an an engineering masters with a CS track but those things shouldn’t require any programming knowledge.

    But I think most of the more common users don’t really care and install the packages they need without thinking too much about it. Unless the source seems very untrustworthy.

    Edit: you can never truly be certain that a project’s code is safe. You can only have soft guarantees. Albeit some like formal verification are harder than others like project popularity.


  • Yeah the strangeness I do have with German as a native Dutch speaker. But that’d made sense since I’d obviously know when a word isn’t Dutch, like you’re alluding to.

    Though I’m assuming it’s not to the same extent you have with Spanish and Portuguese, since that description fits more with what I have with Afrikaans.

    But I only learned some basic German in high school for an hour per week so I definitely don’t have the same experience with it that you probaby do. Neither do I have any push to use or learn it, compared to French where there was.

    Still really cool to hear the perspective from someone like you!