ivan/2024_reading.md

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2024 reading list

Author

ivan commented Apr 8, 2026

Let me start with noise is subjective, one person may not hear a thing and believe it to be silent whereas another may hear the exact same thing and consider it loud.

I keep seeing this question pop up over and over again then when I look in the comments there's still misinformation about side by side. Before answering some context would be helpful to understand why.

Beat frequency, an annoying periodic humming, occurs when two fans next to each other are running near the same constant speed. This happens in push-pull (radiators and cpu coolers) and SIDE-BY-SIDE (CASE FANS, radiators, etc) applications.

There is a Noctua NF-A12x25 two-pack that states the fans are +/- 50rpm to avoid beat frequency.

Why does the NF-A12x25 G2 PWM Sx2-PP have an rpm offset? The G2's have extremely precise speed control and when combined with their SupraTorque feature allowing for extra torque headroom to maintain an exact speed even when against resistance, their speeds are more likely to align together.

Also you may have seen fan specifications saying 2000 ± 10% RPM or 2000 ± 150 RPM, the fan's nominal rated speed with a tolerance. For example, sometimes when two identical fans running at 100% rpm, one may be 2000 rpm vs the other 2200 rpm. These fans have an rpm offset right out of the factory so beat frequency would be negligible. The G2's have a near 10 rpm tolerance, meaning 2000 rpm vs 2010 rpm so they are affected by beat frequency more than any other fan.

With such a tight tolerance is exactly why Noctua went with a technical solution for the G2's with an inherent rpm offset to eliminate beat frequency.

I could get a 2-pack and a single and have all three at different frequencies or just load up 3 identical fans.

A 2-pack and a single may be good enough, the single will have an 25 rpm offset compared to the others out of the box. I'd suggest keeping the PP's together like PPA-PPB-Single so at least two fans have 50 rpm offset instead of PPA-Single-PPB with 25 rpm offsets on all. If you encounter beat frequency, you can put the single on another header and introduce your own offset.

3 identical fans, especially if they're G2's may have beat frequency. If you encounter beat frequency, you could daisy chain the top and bottom together and put the middle on it's own fan header for rpm offsets.

As stated in the beginning you may not be noise sensitive and may not hear a difference. However if you are noise sensitive, 50 rpm offset may not be enough, sometimes 100 rpm or 200 rpm is required to completely eliminate beat frequency which would mean creating your own rpm offsets.

Also curious how that works as I have all three fans on a single header and use FanControl to manage it. Does the offset apply in a way that FC is not aware of or will it override that?

FanControl/Bios only sees the rpm of the one fan with the 4th pwm pin, the other two fans are slaved and do not have this pin (3 pins). The offset is inherent and will continue to have an rpm offset at all times even when daisy chained. FC is not aware of the offset at all, as stated when 3 fans daisyed together it'll report the rpm of only the fan with the 4th pwm pin.

For example, if your setup is like PPA-PPB-Single and the single has the 4th pin then FC may show 1000 rpm from the single while the PPA is at 975 rpm and PPB is at 1025 rpm. If your setup is like PPA-PPB-Single and the PPA has the 4th pin then FC may show 1000 rpm from the PPA while the PPB is at 1050 rpm and the single is at 1025 rpm.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Noctua/comments/1onf1rc/sidebyside_config/

Author

ivan commented Apr 15, 2026

no i had no insider information. just an accurate world model

https://x.com/tenobrus/status/2041581331076018434

Author

ivan commented Apr 16, 2026

Does Yegge really think that building production software this way is a good idea?

Let's assume that managing context well is a problem and that this kind of orchestration solves it. But I see another problem with agents:

When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it's small, like the selection of a data structure. Eventually, though, you want to add a feature that clashes with that invariant. At that point there are usually three choices:

* Don't add the feature. The invariant is a useful simplifying principle and it's more important than the feature; it will pay dividends in other ways.

* Add the feature inelegantly or inefficiently on top of the invariant. Hey, not every feature has to be elegant or efficient.

* Go back and change the invariant. You've just learnt something new that you hadn't considered and puts things in a new light, and it turns out there's a better approach.

Often, only one of these is right. Usually, one of these is very, very wrong, and with bad consequences.

But picking among them isn't a matter of context. It's a matter of judgment and the models - not the harnesses - get this judgment wrong far too often (they go with what they know - the "average" of their training - or they just don't get it). So often, in fact, that mistakes quickly accumulate and compound, and after a few bad decisions like this the codebase is unsalvageable. Today's models are just not good enough (yet) to create a complete sustainable product on their own. You just can't trust them to make wise decisions. Study after study and experiement after experiment show this.

Now, perhaps we make better judgment calls because we have context that the agent doesn't. But we can't really dump everything we know, from facts to lessons, and that pertains to every abstraction layer of the software, into documents. Even if we could, today's models couldn't handle them. So even if it is a matter of context, it is not something that can be solved with better context management. Having an audit trail is nice, but not if it's a trail of one bad decision after another.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619679

Author

ivan commented Apr 21, 2026

you can easily identify the people who were not involved in sports or extra curricular activities in middle school/high school when playing ranked

there are people who think they make no mistakes and talking to them is harassment, for them winning is just a coincidence of events going their way sometimes

https://x.com/dubbyOW/status/2046439897402106317

Author

ivan commented Apr 25, 2026

evergreen controversial opinion: it is good to care about the quality of your work

https://x.com/garybernhardt/status/2047931752132510013

Author

ivan commented May 5, 2026

get bodylastics bands, they have an inner cord that prevents the latex from snapping at you

https://old.reddit.com/r/ResistanceBand/comments/1inz6v1/how_sure_can_i_be_that_i_wont_get_injured_if_a/

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ivan commented Apr 8, 2026

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ivan commented Apr 16, 2026

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ivan commented May 5, 2026

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