The algorithmically powered in-home physical caching platform
February 13, 2021 8:48 AM Subscribe
shitbowl represents the translation of decades of computer science discoveries in information storage into the domain of physical artefact caching. Infinitely scalable, the platform acts to reduce mental load for users and consequently enhance cognitive performance across the board.
My shitbowl was discontinued because it had a fatal flaw - it was too big, which messed with the sorting algorithm and made search too time-consuming (it was a cardboard box that held my toys).
posted by hat_eater at 9:06 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by hat_eater at 9:06 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is great! I too did not care for the bowl that looked like something a Swedish person, perhaps, might like.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:28 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:28 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Is there an expansion pack that can connect my Shitbowl© with my Crap Drawer©? Is the Shitbowl© using proprietary hardware? Or is it all planned obsolescence and/or scareware?
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:42 AM on February 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:42 AM on February 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
My wife and I share the pro-version of this system - the shit drawer (aka junk drawer). As a long-time user, I have become aware of scaling issues with the platform. While the intermediate drawer size is functional but occasionally unwieldy, I would not recommend adoption of the (extra cost) “garage” model which is almost completely useless. Search times can be extreme and searches often time out, leading to duplication of lost filed items.
posted by sudogeek at 9:49 AM on February 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by sudogeek at 9:49 AM on February 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
Be warned - using this platform, many searches yield nondeterministic results due to the nostalgia cache discovery glitch.
posted by skippyhacker at 10:02 AM on February 13, 2021 [23 favorites]
posted by skippyhacker at 10:02 AM on February 13, 2021 [23 favorites]
I have had a huge ceramic bowl on my side if the bedroom for this purpose for years. My wife calls it the crapola jar.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:04 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:04 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I've upgraded to a multi-level shit tabernacle. It still needs some trim and paint but has been functioning very well for a couple years. The slide out change tray has a curved, bowl like bottom.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:13 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:13 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
My art studio is a ... shitroom? I guess?
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:17 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:17 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Pssh, I independently invented this algorithm in the 90's, and have currently implemented the shitdesk for primary cache, the shitbox for overflow storage, and the shitloft for long-term archival.
I can alas confirm that the search algorithm is non-linear in time, such that acquiring a new instance from external source via postman interface is usually quicker than retrieval from the shitloft. There also appears to be a memory leak such that items on the shitdesk are no longer available when attempting to retrieve from cache. (I could SWEAR I left it there...)
Alternative approaches such as deleting items prior to storage in shit[unit] have been attempted, but lose efficiency over time as more items are invariably acquired.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:19 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
I can alas confirm that the search algorithm is non-linear in time, such that acquiring a new instance from external source via postman interface is usually quicker than retrieval from the shitloft. There also appears to be a memory leak such that items on the shitdesk are no longer available when attempting to retrieve from cache. (I could SWEAR I left it there...)
Alternative approaches such as deleting items prior to storage in shit[unit] have been attempted, but lose efficiency over time as more items are invariably acquired.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:19 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
My shitbowl has been in service for roughly four+ decades. It is a metal hemisphere 8 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep. The exterior is dark green enamel, the rolled lip is enameled black and the interior white. Possibly for the first time ever I looked at the bottom to discover it was made in Poland during the Soviet era. When I was still bartending it had to be emptied regularly as it began to overflow with "chump change", loose coin from tips. These days it is much more stable and sedate although it still harbors weird, forgotten shit at the bottom as any good shitbowl does...
posted by jim in austin at 10:31 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 10:31 AM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
What happens if you drop cache?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 AM on February 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I’ve been a happy customer of CrapTable™️ for years, which comes with a periodic optimization protocol called Mrs. slkinsey Has Had Enough.
posted by slkinsey at 10:36 AM on February 13, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by slkinsey at 10:36 AM on February 13, 2021 [7 favorites]
I don't see this replacing The Handbag™ any time soon nor (much more deterministic) The BF's Pockets™
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 11:01 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 11:01 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Too many serifs, not enough wiggly armed quasi-humans and ukulele music, actual human showing through, B-.
posted by mhoye at 11:03 AM on February 13, 2021
posted by mhoye at 11:03 AM on February 13, 2021
Every room I inhabit becomes a crap bowl. My office.
One thing I find interesting is that the descriptions accompanying many contemporary paintings and the language used to describe some technology projects both seem to dip into the same bucket of tomfoolery. I'm constantly surprised that more poets aren't employed as consultants to generate higher quality, highly specialized niche marketing like this.
posted by mecran01 at 11:24 AM on February 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
One thing I find interesting is that the descriptions accompanying many contemporary paintings and the language used to describe some technology projects both seem to dip into the same bucket of tomfoolery. I'm constantly surprised that more poets aren't employed as consultants to generate higher quality, highly specialized niche marketing like this.
posted by mecran01 at 11:24 AM on February 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
Perhaps they are, mecran01 , but neither pursuit respects the other so they have to use different nyms.
Centuries from now, scholars will hunt traces of our great lyrical minds through their work-for-hire masterpieces.
posted by clew at 11:32 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Centuries from now, scholars will hunt traces of our great lyrical minds through their work-for-hire masterpieces.
posted by clew at 11:32 AM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
So many people are so very, very bored right now.
posted by saveyoursanity at 11:50 AM on February 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by saveyoursanity at 11:50 AM on February 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
I had a really nice artisinal shitbowl for a while. It sat stop the coffee table with handy shit shelves underneath for shoving all the not-immediately-required stuff that accumulated on the top and complemented the shit drawers and shit closet.
At one time, I actually had drawers for different broad categories of shit, like old cell phones, PDAs, and their chargers, tools, random computer parts, etc, but it eventually turned into a shitsplosion.
posted by wierdo at 1:41 PM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
At one time, I actually had drawers for different broad categories of shit, like old cell phones, PDAs, and their chargers, tools, random computer parts, etc, but it eventually turned into a shitsplosion.
posted by wierdo at 1:41 PM on February 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Indeed the coffee cup shelf and pan shelf in my kitchen have ended up with an LRU replacement strategy for a while now. And I'm pretty sure our storage unit on the edge of town counts as swap space.
posted by traveler_ at 3:13 PM on February 13, 2021
posted by traveler_ at 3:13 PM on February 13, 2021
I'm sticking with stratigraphy. Oldest stuff on the bottom of the pile, and by the time I sift through the pile, I can discard the irrelevant stuff.
Wait long enough, and it's all irrelevant.
posted by mikelieman at 6:34 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wait long enough, and it's all irrelevant.
posted by mikelieman at 6:34 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
But does it scale?
posted by panglos at 8:03 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by panglos at 8:03 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Too many vowels, not enough consonants.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:13 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:13 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
But does it scale?
If this is directed to me, then yes, the stratigraphic method scales up to geological levels.
posted by mikelieman at 8:55 PM on February 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
If this is directed to me, then yes, the stratigraphic method scales up to geological levels.
posted by mikelieman at 8:55 PM on February 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
So many people are so very, very bored right now.
When people are bored but otherwise have all their needs met, that's when art happens.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:31 AM on February 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
When people are bored but otherwise have all their needs met, that's when art happens.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:31 AM on February 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
One shitbowl caching policy optimization I've found very useful is that whenever a new item is cached for the first time, one existing item must be fished out at random from the bottom of the bowl, then either stuffed into the back pocket of my shorts or dumped back into the bowl.
Everything still in the back pocket of my shorts on laundry day goes in the bin without being further examined, as does anything lumpy that hurts to sit down on.
posted by flabdablet at 8:53 AM on February 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
Everything still in the back pocket of my shorts on laundry day goes in the bin without being further examined, as does anything lumpy that hurts to sit down on.
posted by flabdablet at 8:53 AM on February 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
Known defects:
- One of the most common search interfaces is known to randomize the LRU order, with likelihood increasing proportional to the age of the requested item at the time of search.
- Smaller cache items can spontaneously age independent of their usage characteristics, resulting in the smallest items frequently migrating to the oldest cache generation. Combined with the previous defect, the current version of shitbowl may be inappropriate for items below a size threshold TBD. The degenerate case for small-item shitbowl performance is comparable to the “random pile of shit” caching strategy, widely considered an antipattern.
- Cache expiration is not well implemented. Once the cache is full, aging out the oldest items requires rebuilding the cache, which typically corrupts the LRU ordering for remaining items.
- The shitbowl cache is vulnerable to malicious attack by feline vectors already present in many prospective environments.
- A known issue with misbehaving child processes may result in a catastrophic crash of shitbowl.
posted by gelfin at 8:22 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
- One of the most common search interfaces is known to randomize the LRU order, with likelihood increasing proportional to the age of the requested item at the time of search.
- Smaller cache items can spontaneously age independent of their usage characteristics, resulting in the smallest items frequently migrating to the oldest cache generation. Combined with the previous defect, the current version of shitbowl may be inappropriate for items below a size threshold TBD. The degenerate case for small-item shitbowl performance is comparable to the “random pile of shit” caching strategy, widely considered an antipattern.
- Cache expiration is not well implemented. Once the cache is full, aging out the oldest items requires rebuilding the cache, which typically corrupts the LRU ordering for remaining items.
- The shitbowl cache is vulnerable to malicious attack by feline vectors already present in many prospective environments.
- A known issue with misbehaving child processes may result in a catastrophic crash of shitbowl.
posted by gelfin at 8:22 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
CLOSED WONTFIX
Please resubmit if still present in 2.0
posted by flabdablet at 11:56 AM on February 15, 2021
Please resubmit if still present in 2.0
posted by flabdablet at 11:56 AM on February 15, 2021
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posted by condour75 at 8:58 AM on February 13, 2021 [17 favorites]