The available shards file is just a hint to save us a bit
of time later; we don't need it to run and it can get updated
pretty easily later. If we have problems reading it, we
should just report the error, nuke the file, and continue
without it.
This commit implements BSI with variable bit depth using a
sign magnitudeto indicate whether a value is positive or negative.
This also rearranges the existence bit to be the first bit instead
of the last bit.
So with the switch to a new linter, we get a lot of new warnings,
and the majority of them are harmless probably, but a few might be
real. Variously just use _ to suppress warnings, or report errors.
There's probably things here that deserve better fixes, but we can
always revisit it.
This commit adds the ability to remove an 'available shard'
from the shard cache. This does not affect shards known to be
available because of local data.
