Horoscopes are a great way to pass a boring lunchbreak, and an excellent excuse for ending a ill-considered relationship. They’re also a hilarious way to handle CPU scheduling under Linux, thanks to the work of [Lucas Zampieri].
The project is called scx_horoscope, and it’s a sched_Ext scheduler that makes its CPU scheduling choices based on what the heavens are doing in real time. Different tasks are handled based on different astronomical objects. For example, the Sun represents life force, and thus grants boons to key system processes. The Moon, an emotive influence, rules over interactive processes like shells and terminals. Mercury, as the god of communication, handles network and IO tasks, and so it goes from there. It’s not just a surface level thing, either—[Lucas] has implemented the influences of the elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and there are negative timeslice penalties on associated tasks when a given planet lands in retrograde.
You can argue whether or not the broader motions of the heavens have any impact on our lives based on the time and circumstances of our birth. But you can’t argue that scx_horoscope really will influence how your computer runs based on the dance of the planets in the sky. Mostly, though, we concern ourselves with astronomy rather than astrology around these parts!
[Thanks to Benjamin for the tip!]
don’t schedule anything while mercury is retrograde!!
I really want a very large scale project which correlates astrology with statistical data about people. We have all the data we need.
The average insurance company has millions of people’s personal details, and their health histories. I see no reason why they couldn’t make birth charts for all the people, and statistically correlate health issues, or life events. Imagine seeing stuff like, “people born under the sun sign of X have a 12.34% higher probability of getting diabetes than the general population”.
It could be very interesting. Astrology is very interesting to me but I can’t believe it…just yet
There was a study about moon phases and… I forgot… admission to psychological care, or something like that, proper scientific journal and everything. There was no statistically significant correlation found.
I don’t believe in any of this except that the moon has impact. But those silly articles about mercury being in uranus or whatever they say, make no sense and is just gibberish talk. Might as well ask AI about it’s feelings.
My father was a police officer for decades here in the Netherlands and the busiest time to work is during a full moon. They increased the amount of police on the street during full moons and even then it’s more work. There is much more street violence when a full moon is out. This can mean two things. Either the moon correlates to peoples brain function, or people are more likely to be outside when they can see things better. But in cities I doubt that last part matters.
@Bob the builder
“There is much more street violence when a full moon is out. This can mean two things.”
I have checked only few papers in this subject and no statistically significant data was found. This gives us third option (second factor that was showing up in regular intervals but remained unnoticed) and fourth option (it was your region specific).
Werewolves !
I read somewhere that from an evolutionary point of view, there was more night activity during full moon’s because predators could see better. So we evolved to be more aware during that night and that’s why we are less sleepy.
How does the body know when to be awake? It’s simply integrated in your body every 44 days or something like that. So even if you don’t see the moon you still get waken up.
As for the correlation, I don’t believe anything about astrology directly, but I still believe there is a correlation between when you are born, when you were in the womb of you mother at which season, when she did different seasonal activities, and also when you are a kid at which light you were exposed and which activities you were exposed at your younger age.
All of these could influence your personality given when you were born
Average insurance companies are NOT run by geniuses. They may (mostly temporarily) hire few geniuses to fatten their profit-extraction plans, but otherwise they are (and banks too, btw) are the dumbest of the dumb, since they have guaranteed profit no matter what.
Giving them too much credit and having brains they supposed to be thinking with is a common false causation error. Yes, they sit on historical data for millions of people, but what do they do with it? Sell it to the highest bidder for profit who does the real data digging for them, while they collect gazillion greenbucks in profits.
Banks are no smarter, they hire “consulting firms” to do all the thinking, while various dimons dime-a-dozen dazzle with poorly digested regurgitated buzzwords at all kinds of Davoses, and aggressively bristle, once asked proper questions they could never answer. They simply don’t care to know.
(US insurance cartels did supreme/masterful gerrymandering in the mid-1990s – the so-called “location tying”, ie, if you live in one of their privately designated “undesirables” zones, aka “high risk”, your insurance goes up and stays up – but if you are in, say, 90210, your insurance is one of the lowest in the nation, even if you drive Ferraris or Koenigseggs. Your choices getting the hell out are limited – real estate pricing indirectly makes sure you stay permanently nailed to your “affordability bracket” and pay higher rates no matter what; unless you fake your location, btw – you can have multiple state IDs and choose to “register” in the one that has the lowest insurance rates, yes, just like in the USSR, btw, directly or indirectly, avoid the scrutiny and pretend you are elsewhere; unfortunately, IRS don’t like that part – flexible living – and tends to hunt you down, and, of course, insurance companies love hiring cheap private investigators to hunt down your shenanigans and check you out with some kind of un-enforcable laws you didn’t know existed).
Offer insurance companies a billion greenbucks and they’ll sell you all the data in the world :]
The rule of correlation does not equal causation would still apply.
But the causation of boosting idiotic thinking (and exploitation) from such an endeavor can be predicted.
So perhaps not do it then?
That was a reply to shinsukke
correlation is a relationship though. proving there’s a relationship validates the practice even if we don’t know which way the causation goes.
(maybe werewolves make the moon full, who is to know?)
In the 90’s my future ex-wife asked me to write an astrology program. We knew somebody in Washington DC who was big into it and advised many people there. I looked into it and remembered while in school the physics professor saying you pediatrician had a bigger gravitational influence than any planetary bodies, range matters. So I had to bail on a project I couldn’t logically support, same for the wife. I don’t do magic.
1990s was when the 1980s fad of “biological cycles” was fading out, so they reached out to the Old Faithful Astrology instead. I don’t remember much, i think the cycles were 23 days, then something like 25 and I think 32. Three cycles in all, and those supposedly start at the day you were born. Mostly lunacy, but entertaining one. (though, in defense of the word “lunacy” – it is based off “luna”, which is moon, which definitely affects people, so not entirely lunacy, just comparable to).
I think this is probably rooted in the human drive to oversimplify their lives by establishing some kind of definite, however arbitrary, framework to go with.
I’ve owned a Cyrix MediaGX and a Centaur 600, also some VIA Samuel. They can run about like this without help from astrology.
OK, that’s actually cool. Real Adeptus Mechanicus vibes.
Computer performance based on the zodiac is brilliant. I love this, and think it would go a long way to restoring humanity to the office bound workforce – which is to say when the Moon is in Sagittarius or whatever, it’s a park day and everybody just picnics because the computers are being crappy.
Also, I remember some comic back in the day where astrology was nothing more than a poor excuse for why you called your girlfriend a bitch last weekend.
Still, introducing some unpredictability into desktop computers wouldn’t be the worst thing for our emotional well-being, just so long as we agreed to embrace it.