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Deploy based on the planet alignments (github.com/lhartikk)
134 points by edofic on March 16, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 45 comments



This could be integrated in to an SDK - Superstitious Developer Kit. Other tools in the chain could check for things like Friday the 13th, the occurrence of three consecutive sixes in your IP address, and tell you which oils to vaporise, incense to burn, crystals to wear, homoeopathic prophylactics to take, whether it's okay to build or deploy if you, your mother, or sister(s) are menstruating, and so on and so forth.


Better look for consecutive sixes in both hexadecimal and decimal, too.


Pattern recognition would be needed due to the sheer number of potential vectors for evil numbers (auto-assigned client-side tcp port numbers, 'evil bit' tcp flag, network-order bitstream integers, packed binary objects, memory allocation/access, user ids, etc). There's a lot of potential mysticism we haven't touched on with either cryptography or AI....


Hexadecimal: the numeric base of Deep Black Magic.


This would be fantastic.


IPv666?


[flagged]


#casualsexism


It's not necessarily sexism to point out an (unfortunate) demographic fact (at least, in the US [1]).

[1] http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

(Don't get me wrong; I'm not a huge fan of the wording of the grandparent comment either, as it could be taken in a normative sense. I just dislike kneejerk PC callouts more.)


The fact in itself isn't sexist; but I don't see how bringing it up here is relevant except to say "Hey people, remember that almost everyone here is a guy!"


If statistical facts about reality is sexism, then the word is meaningless.


The same author also wrote: ArnoldC - Programming language based on the one-liners of Arnold Schwarzenegger:

  IT'S SHOWTIME
  TALK TO THE HAND "hello world"
  YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED
https://github.com/lhartikk/ArnoldC


This is hilarious. I'd love to see the source code of a large program written in ArnoldC :)


Imho the author should have written AstroBuild in ArnoldC. Would have been the perfect use case ;)


Am I correct that it only tests for conjunction with an orb of 1 degree? There are many aspects, some positive and some negative. Planets are also considered to align when they stand up to 8 degree apart.

An improved version would for example deploy when there is a triangle or conjunction, but fail on an opposition or square.

But as any astrologer will tell you, planned dates are meaningless. So yes, why indeed?


humor


Haha..

This should be a boon to religious Hindu coders (if there are any). LOL - Based on Brihaspati' proximity to Mangal's orbit (I have no idea what I am saying) you could choose to not release to minimize your bad luck. I love this - and you actually have a use case. You should shop this around as an app to the big Indian outsourcing firms. All the best!


Does this use sidereal or tropical astrology? I think Hindu astrology uses the sidereal system. (Does it sound like I know what I'm talking about?)


I had look at source code, it seems like very inaccurate approximation, real planet position could be a few degrees different.

You can get 10' accuracy with a few kilobytes of polynomials. Some astronomical (and astrological) programs use polynomials a few megabytes big. JPL ephems are 1 to 100 gigabytes.


You raise an interesting question. Does accuracy matter for something like this? Would a more accurate version be better...?


Yes! NASA does deployments based on planet positions:-)

Even normal deployment based on time of day, or time since sunrise depends on planets positions. Center of gravity of solar system is not inside the Sun but OUTSIDE. Sunrise and sunset times depends on Jupiter, Saturn and other planets.

Also Moon and Sun brings tidal waves...


Of course. The fact that it has not worked until now is that all the calculations were wrong!


As most people who've used commercial deployment systems will tell you, accuracy does not appear to matter.


One of the first startups I was involved in was founded by a guy that refused to sign contracts if the stars were not "favourable". Unsurprisingly the company eventually failed.


That is a great sales hack, actually. You can always claim that as an excuse to post-pone a deadline, since there is no good way for the other party to call your bullshit.


> there is no good way for the other party to call your bullshit.

Er, actually...


To be fair, the messages this produces make more sense as part of a build that some I've seen.


I'm afraid to ask about the use case ;)


Presumably to avoid deploying in unfavourable consolations.


The word is constellations. Sorry for correcting you but it took me a bit to figure out what you were trying to say :)


Stupid autocorrect...


I actually read that as "constellations".


This was exactly the answer I was so afraid to read :)


This should be taken in consideration when setting deadlines : at least 3 months without deployment when Uranus and Neptune are aligned.


Reminds me of this story: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase-of-the-moon.html


Many interesting explanations in here: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/go01.html


My mum would be all over this(if she was a programmer) :P

She will avoid buying expensive things or travelling when the planets are not aligned, it's supposed to be bad luck - silly astrology.


The moon is missing. Let me know when you figure that one out.


  % pom
  The Moon is Waning Crescent (20% of Full)
  % man pom
  POM(6)                       FreeBSD Games Manual                       POM(6)
  
  NAME
       pom — display the phase of the moon
  
  SYNOPSIS
       pom [-p] [-d yyyy.mm.dd] [-t hh:mm:ss]
  
  DESCRIPTION
       The pom utility displays the current phase of the moon.  Useful for
       selecting software completion target dates and predicting managerial
       behavior.
  
       Use the -p option to print just the phase as a percentage.
  
       Use the arguments -d and -t to specify a specific date and time for which
       the phase of the moon has to be calculated.  If -d but not -t has been
       specified, it will calculate the phase of the moon on that day at mid‐
       night.
  
  SEE ALSO
       `Practical Astronomy with Your Calculator' by Duffett-Smith.
  
  FreeBSD 10.1                     July 14, 2010                    FreeBSD 10.1


That's no moon.


Very nerdy, very awesome.


The biggest question: WHY???


The second biggest question: WHY NOT???


Now, the question: why?


Easy: Because one can. ;-)


Answer: Why Not?




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