iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 2h

LTFS allows to expose the tape as FUSE filesystem. Which means I can drag-and-drop files directly from my *other* NFS mount directly there. "Nobody needs 10 Gbps home network!!!" Ha-ha, the tape drive literally goes brrrrrrr at >3 Gbps, because hardware compression.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 21h

Calculated my storage needs, given TBs of astrophoto raws, looked at storage prices, and started playing with tape. Second-hand LTO-6 IBM drive is built like a tank, sounds like a tank, makes its presence known. Drive is expensive, but media is not, only 10..20 €/TB.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Elephant remains largely unacknowledged in the room.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

BMAAEDD: Blind Men And An Elephant Driven Development

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Narrator: It only got worse after we managed to automate the blind rewrites.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

All good questions. I will check with the manufacturer as soon as somebody actually picks up!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Updated to Windows 26H2 on my T490 astro-laptop. Unplugged USB-C and system immediately went down, at 90% battery. Unplugged before boot: also shuts down. Had to physically re-plug the battery to hard-reset the EC/charging state. 2026 is truly the year of the Windows desktop.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes, this posting is for on-site in Seattle office.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Settling the debate once and for all. Deep sky astrophotography with a phone? Yep, definitely possible. Please wait for a dial tone.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Pareto principle strikes again: with 500mm refractor, it takes 10x less work to do single-frame shot, compared to 1400mm EHD 8" mosaic, still a good result. Moon shots are easy, unless you go full nuts about it. Full res: app.astrobin.com/i/b5z8ll

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hey folks, our team needs more JVM engineers, apply here: www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1055...

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It finally dawned on me that a full Moon means most of the interesting craters are directly illuminated, so they lack contrast. Tycho and Clavius are normally very photogenic. Full-res "99% Harvest Moon, Mosaic": app.astrobin.com/i/ra1xvc

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The close-up on one of more interesting regions shows how the disk bubbles on fairly low scale. "Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse: Close-up": app.astrobin.com/i/ai61v9

app.astrobin.com

Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse: Close-up - AstroBin

Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse: Close-up imaged with Lunt LS60MT, ZWO ASI676MM, by Aleksey Shipilëv on AstroBin.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Finally got to process this in both plain and inverse-curves variants. There is a quite a bit of activity over the disk and in prominences. "Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse": app.astrobin.com/i/tke9f1

app.astrobin.com

Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse - AstroBin

Sun Hα, 2 Hour Timelapse imaged with Lunt LS60MT, ZWO ASI676MM, by Aleksey Shipilëv on AstroBin.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

RepairCafe restarts after summer break: Saturday, Sep 26, 11:00..13:00 at Potsdam SLB. Come bring your curiosity and your broken devices. We can tinker together, maybe successfully, maybe not, but it should be fun either way. We speak German, English, Russian.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Do you need 10Gbps network at home? Maybe not. But if your scratch astronomical data store is on local file server -- because your local desktop does not have terabytes of free space -- you would rather have it, no further questions asked.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Left unchecked for just two hours, software engineers will generate nearly 666 GiB of astronomical data without once stopping to ask how it impacts the world.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Windy night, guiding was chasing seeing at whooping 1.5", which is still fine at this pixel scale. Looks fairly promising, higher loads in calmer conditions would be next. Here is NGC 4236 and its neighborhood through the open window. Full res: app.astrobin.com/i/vcm8gd

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This thing is stupidly easy to polar align. No flex in "up-down", fine-grained bolts in "left-right". It took me 10 seconds (!) to get below 5" alignment error! WHAT.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yay, MLAstro SAL-33 looks like a drop-in replacement for ZWO AM5N. (Which is in itself an overkill for this particular setup, still hunting for second-hand AM3N.)

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My usual workflows also work out of the box, GPU acceleration works, RC-Astro tools work, overall processes feel snappier. And there are new stats! I expect manufacturers would start using those in their marketing. This shapes up to be a best PixInsight update ever.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Say what, PixInsight 1.9.5 ships with some nice performance improvements. The same workflow on the same machine took about 15 minutes before, with local normalization taking most of the time. And now it is blazing fast! Impressive!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Do not invite me to a C++ Memory Model talk, if it does not have a slide like this one.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Take this: "DK2". That is only thing you are missing to turn J9->JDK29!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

✅ JDK 27 shipped yesterday with Shenandoah Late Barrier Expansion (JDK-8366041), gets us 0..20% throughput bump. 🔄 JDK 28 would hopefully ship in Mar 2027 with Shenandoah Hotpatching (JDK-8384415), gets us another 0..5% throughput bump. 🤘 JDK 29 in Sep 2027 would be awesome.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Mid-September Hα Sun. I suddenly realized that my air-spaced, pressure-tuned Lunt 60 *can* be used in colder weather too, so upcoming winter is not going to stop me! Must be misremembering thermally-tuned Quarks operating range. Higher res: app.astrobin.com/i/frxg9p

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

SV503 sits in my "too sale" pile for a year now. I have been using it occasionally as the sacrificial scope for solar work, where I do not want to risk this workhorse Petzval.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It is one humbling thing to cede half of your software developer career to a datacenter full of GPUs. It would be a whole new level of humility to cede the other half to a fruit fly farm.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It is almost inevitable for a grown man in his forties to have a hobby that involves painting expensive toys.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I am embarrassed to admit this, but I somehow misremembered this from my Uni days and thought the Navier–Stokes problem was to find a closed-form solution in ℝ³, rather than to prove the existence of smooth solutions. A man can dream.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"Friedrich Merz »zutiefst schockiert« über Ergebnis in Sachsen-Anhalt" -- Mein Gott, man muss über 50 Jahre lang in der IT-Branche tätig sein, um ein solches Maß an Kurzsichtigkeit zu erreichen. Die deutsche Bundesregierung heute, das Symbolbild.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Friday funking around with cleaner Shenandoah GC logs, already in JDK mainline. Modern concurrent GCs for the win for both latencies, footprint, and often throughput as well!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

А, ну вот: роса довольно чистая сама по себе. На будущее я бы в чемодан, сумку, мешок с оптикой заложил 100-граммовые пакеты силикагеля. В дождь может тоже немножко подсушить, но я б наверное ещё и противоросник-нагреватель с собой в дождь брал.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Я бы больше опасался, что если объектив в штатном режиме использования близок к точке росы, и влажный воздух умеет проникать внутрь, то внутри начнёт расти грибок. "Ваши просветляющие покрытия пожрал долгоносик, милорд". В фотосервис бы отнёс, попросил уплотнения поменять, где можно.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Опыт астрофото показывает, что в целом это потерянные кадры. Роса на оптике не катастрофа: у астрофотографов регулярно нагреватели-противоросники отказывают, выпадает роса, и ничего. (Смотрит на передние линзы телескопов и не паникует). В вакуумном мешке с силикагелем эта роса высасывается обратно.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Me in 2016: <checks that GC logs can be understood by humans> Me in 2026: <checks that GC logs can be understood by Claude>

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Behind every good astrophoto lie tens of failed attempts, a graveyard of bad optical train setups, mistimed exposures, alignment mistakes, unlucky seeing, post-processing failures, etc. It will take time, sweat and patience to repeat the results in earnest.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

It sounds ridiculous, yet the same thing pops out in astrophoto comments. Consumer cameras actually try to be helpful: I had to coerce it to give me a terrible photo, which might lull one into believing that *astro*-photo is as easy as point and shoot.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I took a "professional" camera (Canon 5D Mark II with EF 24-70) that "professionals" use and made the photo of my green backyard. As you (CANNOT) SEE, it is all CGI, and "professionals" blatantly lie about their results! It is all blurry, blocky, and no real green in sight!!!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Finally spent enough local compute to process the partial recording of partial solar eclipse last week. This eclipse is too close to horizon, so you get all the clouds you (don't) want. But you can still pull things out! AstroBin: app.astrobin.com/i/2bu5pi

app.astrobin.com

Partial Solar Eclipse in Hα: Timelapse - AstroBin

Partial Solar Eclipse in Hα: Timelapse imaged with Lunt LS60MT, ZWO ASI676MM, by Aleksey Shipilëv on AstroBin.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I have a hypothesis: there must be a large cohort of software developers who dodged the addictive AI development loop that keeps you working late into the night, having already acquired natural immunity by getting sick with -- and recovering from -- Factorio.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Remastered with Sun stacked from the nearest frames, greatly reducing surface distortions. Recomposed the airplane shot onto it. It is both better and worse than a single frame, alas. app.astrobin.com/i/vgdwfh?r=D

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

What do you do when tired after eclipse observations, but still have a clear sky? Feels bad to waste it, so you just point the scope at something that is available through the window. Eagle Nebula, my old friend: app.astrobin.com/i/v43z0z

app.astrobin.com

Eagle Nebula - AstroBin

Eagle Nebula imaged with Askar FRA500, ZWO ASI2600MC Pro, 45m of total integration, by Aleksey Shipilëv on AstroBin.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A luckier cloudless shot looks something like this, by the way. So there is some chance to remaster the thing into something really good.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Well, hello there. Sun disk in Hα (normal), Sun prominence at 2h in Hα (huge), Moon in Hα (black), thin clouds near the horizon in Hα (blurry), airplane [seems to check out as Ethiopian cargo plane] with exhaust plume in Hα (clearly visible). I'll remaster it... later.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

One other thing to bear in mind: the retina has no pain sensors. The retinal damage is photochemical and needs some time for symptoms to appear. So looking through an unsafe filter would not give the immediate sense of danger. Do not stare into the Sun with your remaining eye!

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Saying this as the astrophotography amateur who seen first-hand what damage Sun makes even on small telescope glass/plastic parts. The tender cells in your eyes stand no chance when shit hits the fan. Treat the huge thermonuclear reactor in the sky with respect it deserves.

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Aleksey Shipilëv @shipilev.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

When you do use Solar-grade filters, usually in astrofoil form, you have to inspect them for scratches, holes, tears EVERY TIME you use them. Filter failing when you are watching would be fast enough that blink reflex would likely NOT save from damage.

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