matdevdug

matdevdug, 11 months ago to random

I ran into a #Sbarro in Denmark. For those unaware, it’s like legendarily bad pizza in the us. Famous for being at airports and dying malls. So of course I’m like “I gotta try this”.

It’s just as horrible as I remember. Large but flavorless, with a sauce best described as “old pasta sauce from microwave”. But I got distracted because the teen working there has an NRA hat, the national rifle association’s somewhat famous hat.

I’m like “do you know what NRA stands for”? He looks at me and is like “yeah the National Rights Association”. I explain it to him and he’s like “no I don’t think so”.

So funny. Has made me laugh all day. This was the hat:

matdevdug, 1 year ago to random

Boss: why is this service using IPv6?
Me: I just wanted to use IPv6 once in my career for a production service. Seems sad people did all that work for nothing.
Boss: 😑
#networking #ipv6 #infrastructure

matdevdug, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to fediverse

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23806093/mastodon-csam-study-decentralized-network

The #Fediverse needs to implement a better solution for this before anything else. On a moral level it’s a disgusting blight on this community. We can’t rely on amateur server administrators to understand how to scan for and report CSAM.

Also folks, you can go to jail for this. You aren’t a big company with a legal department that can make a Section 230 argument. Even if you could, doing absolutely nothing about illegal material renders it moot. If you run a server and don’t scan for this material, you need to start today.

Reddit has a good breakdown of how they do it. This is what every service that lets users upload media has to do, every time. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/13bvo5b/reddits_p0_media_safety_detection/

#MastoAdmin #Mastodon #Admin

matdevdug, 11 months ago to programming

Wrote a guide for developers looking to move to Denmark: https://matduggan.com/developers-guide-to-moving-to-denmark/

#programming #developers #denmark

matdevdug, 10 months ago to random

“For this photo we need you to give us getting your face painted by a unicorn is the saddest thing that’s ever happened.”

matdevdug, 1 year ago to random

Chatting with my neighbor about his daughters horseback riding lessons, it became clear that he believed all Americans can ride horses.

Him: “Well you wouldn’t need any lessons. I’m sure you can ride a horse.”
Me: “Why would I know how to ride a horse? I’m from Chicago”
Him: “I think they teach it in public schools.”
Me: “I don’t think the US has horseback riding classes in school but I might be wrong. It’s a big place.”
Him: “That’s really disappointing to hear.”

Sorry man. #expat

matdevdug, 11 months ago to mastodon

I like #Mastodon and the #fediverse but I also waited in line to buy a Dreamcast, owned a Zune and had an HD DVD collection.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to fediverse

I like how a social network operated mostly out of the goodwill of the admins and donations has somehow become the last one standing.

It’s like if Starbucks started throwing coffee in peoples face, Dunkin exploded into flames and the small employee owned coop coffee shop kept chugging along normally.

#fediverse #mastodon

matdevdug, 11 months ago to threads

Man #Threads as a piece of software is just not where I assumed #Meta would launch at. It’s not…..bad? But this thing is coming in screaming hot. It feels like a dev build that they slapped a 1.0 tag on and hit the launch button with their eyes closed.

No DM (which is actually good IMO), no feed of only people you follow (which is likely so the initial feed doesn’t look empty like Mastodon for new users). It’s a tribute to apps like #Ivory and the other third party #Mastodon apps that they’re just miles ahead of the Meta team.

The perks of this for the #Fediverse are pretty clear. People interested in social media as a business are gonna be here. The cross-posting to Instagram and celebrity roster are going to be the solve for “how do people who rely on social media for income join the non-commercial Fediverse”. So if you want to skip that content, it’s gonna be very easy to do cause it’ll all be here.

The ability to move your audience is also super compelling in social media. If you want to run your own server and move your identity from Meta to your own box, the ability to do that is going to be interesting. Again it solved problems for Meta from the perspective of gatekeeping regulation, but adds a lot in terms of moderation.

It’s clear from the interviews they’re going to treat outside servers as effectively “unknown outside content” and apply moderation/filtering to that content as it comes in. Long-term I’m not sure how that will work. Will there be some sort of DMARC-type security steps servers can take? Is it gonna be a trust score based on the domain of the server? Meta still has a ton of hard engineering problems to solve for and how they expose that data to end users outside their platform (if they ever will).

Long-term who knows if this is going to survive. Meta has a high failure rate with new apps and we won’t know if this matters for a few years. My guess is orgs will be willing to dip their toes in here and if they see success, move content from twitter to here. It’s more stable and better run.

matdevdug, 10 months ago to tech

I love interacting with #programmers who are just not interested in anything new. A friend I worked with a few jobs ago learned C in school and that’s the only language he’s ever worked in.

He learned how to deploy applications with RPM packages and that’s it. I was talking about containers and he just couldn’t imagine using one. He runs a pretty successful team on C11 and I can’t argue with the results. It’s a nice reminder that all these tech trends are entirely optional.

#tech #Programming

matdevdug, 11 months ago to random

Hey every single #sass company out there. I don’t want to call you for pricing. I don’t want to hop on a conference call where we discuss my usage of the product and you tell me about all the other products you sell that integrate with this product.

I especially don’t want to reach out to you for pricing, wait a week for a response to my email, which is then an invitation to hop on a call the next week. My primary job is not buying software. It is to write and deliver features for internal or external customers. I don’t have 3+ weeks to fuck around with these stupid meetings.

I had budget for a product this week and ended up using an OSS that I didn’t want to use because I could not deal with talking to their sales team again. They made me “write custom C code to add the one feature I wanted” mad. Now I’ll never use you out of spite.

#tech #programming

matdevdug, 1 year ago to programming

I have no idea how good or bad Go+ is (https://goplus.org/) as I just heard of it today. But can we please not write stuff like this on the language landing page?
"The simplest engineering language that can be mastered by children (script-like style).”

First bash scripting isn't as easy as people make it out to be. Writing excellent bash over 200 lines is more complicated than the same thing in a more conventional language. It's an actual skill.

Second it creates a very strange mental place for newcomers who find your page. So if I don't understand Go+ am I…..less competent than a child?

This is especially true when in order to install the language you need to git clone and build the binary (https://github.com/goplus/gop/blob/main/doc/docs.md#how-to-install)

It would be like me writing a tutorial on how to understand the rules of basketball by starting with “a game so simple even a baby could referee”. First it's not true and second why approach the act of learning from a place of "if you don't understand this, it's your fault". #programming #golang

matdevdug, 10 months ago to workersrights

I enjoy the casualness of a coworker who runs marathons as a hobby revealing how often he has pooped his pants. “Well it’s just part of the sport. Badge of honor really.”

Me grappling with this new reality. “So you and your wife both do these long marathons and then drive home together? In the same car?”

Now I can’t take his feedback seriously at work. I see a comment on a PR where he doesn’t agree with me and I’m like “alright Mr. Shits-your-pants-for-fun, I’ll take it under advisement.”

#work #programming #pullrequest #marathon

matdevdug, 10 months ago to twitter

As someone who never liked #Twitter because it felt like 10 people talking at me, it is surprising to see the emotional reaction people are having to this rebranding.

FWIW I am sorry that your community was destroyed and this place you invested emotional energy in is dying. I’m sorry this place isn’t exactly that and I hope it can fulfill that spot for you. Or #bluesky or #threads or whatever.

#fediverse #mastodon

matdevdug, 10 months ago to apple

I need to stop wasting money on #ipads. They are good at consuming content. Watching videos, reading websites, reading emails. Anything more complicated than that and it falls down. Tablets are horrible devices.

I’m trying to do something basic. I need to compare a calendar to a reservation pdf and a hotel website. It’s infuriating at every step. First I have to find the PDF in files which includes a random assortment of unknown garbage. Is it local or in iCloud? Who is to know?

Then I need to very carefully with my human fingers try to select text. After a few tries, got it. Ok what is the magical incantation to make it so this half goes away and I can select a new half? Is it 4 fingers? 5 fingers?

Every 3-4 years #Apple shows a sizzle reel of the new iPad where I am tricked into thinking you can do actual human work with this thing. You cannot and never can.

“Just buy a keyboard case”. That’s a goddamn laptop and a terrible one at that. I have a great laptop. I don’t need a junky wrapped in plastic shitty one.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to devops

You ever get hired for a #devops job and you need to deliver some measurable value in a week or less?

Run a cost analysis. Orgs, especially big orgs, waste a ton of money in the cloud. I like https://project-koku.github.io/ but there are a million of these for #aws and #gcp. Show up to your 90 day check in or whatever with the graphs showing all the waste and offer to turn it off.

It will make management love you and it is almost no work. Plus stuff like S3 is idiot proof to cost optimize for. So it’s hard to even mess up.

matdevdug, 10 months ago to devops

I interviewed over a year ago at a somewhat famous jewelry company to run their web infrastructure. We had a lot of interviews, then I was told the entire department was terminated and outsourced. Sad for them but I continued to live my life.

Today the same recruiter reached out me to to see if I wanted to do around round of interviews. This was a take home code challenge, a white boarding sessions and 2 in-person interviews. For a company that wiped out their entire infrastructure team a year ago and now was desperately trying to “control costs in a changing environment”.

I was polite but also like “of course not I would never work at a place who cares that little about people”. The recruiter seemed surprised but I feel like that must be common? Am I wrong?

#devops #infrastructure #Programming

matdevdug, 1 year ago to random

Sometimes I complain about living in #Denmark, but watching the Netflix show How to Get Rich has made me realize how bleak it has gotten in the US.

One couple has the husband interviewing for a job where the recruiter informs him they're looking for a "minimum" of 40 hours a week. He responds that as long as it isn't 80 hours a week, "at least not right away”, it's fine. He's got multiple children at home that I guess he's never gonna see again.

One woman is an Olympic gold medalist who cannot afford to get the hot water fixed in her condo. What a horrifying glimpse for the world in how bad life has gotten in the US that even the absolute best, top-tier performers, cannot afford basic luxuries like "hot water in your brand-new condo".

The expert spends a lot of time telling people that actually home ownership, which is impossible, isn't even something they should want. Instead they should focus on the things that make them feel good. It's just this intensely sad show about convincing people they aren't as screwed as they feel.
#USeconomy #USA #depressing

matdevdug, 10 months ago to twitter

Did #Twitter block #EU users? I can’t open any twitter links from my mobile or home internet. I also can’t open the x.com URL. Anyone else or just me?

image/png

matdevdug, 6 days ago to VHDL

I feel like I’m missing something with the #modretro chromatic #fpga handheld. Putting aside that Lucky is an altright shithead for a minute, who is this device even for?

For $20 more I can get an Analogue Pocket that also plays GBA games. Or for $70 I can get an FPGA that plays Gameboy and Gameboy color games. I’m impressed the screen is pixel accurate but having owned a Gameboy Color I don’t remember that screen as being particularly good.

This thing also looks HUGE compared to anything else on the market. It seems to have a lithium battery and a spot for 3 AA batteries, which seems insane? I love supporting AA batteries but why do both?

As someone who loves FPGA retro gaming and uses my #MiSTerFPGA all the time, I cannot think of a single reason I’d buy this.

matdevdug, 5 days ago to random

New post on my blog. You can read it here: https://matduggan.com/simple-kubernetes-secret-encryption-with-python/

matdevdug, 5 days ago to twitter

I enjoy watching #twitter struggle through a familiar pattern we all saw in the 90s on the internet: “Why Libertarian Moderation Doesn’t Work”.

It starts out with free speech but the right kind of free speech. The rest is fake or bots or trolls. Then we evolve into you are either friends with the moderator or you are again them.

Finally we end with the desperate plea of “we will allow pornography” except of course nobody is equipped to moderate that so within days someone will post something either horrifying or just against the law (revenge porn etc) and the entire operation collapses in on itself.

On the plus side the speed by which corporations will cancel their ad spend rather than run the risk that Coca-Cola posts are run next to fake celebrity pornography is going to really show us how fast Musk can speed run destroying a company. Fingers crossed it’s shut down by 2025 and I get to watch a documentary on its death.

matdevdug, 4 days ago to Kubernetes

On #kubernetes birthday I have to say some thanks. Big thank you to all the maintainers doing great work, especially the small team keeping #etcd alive and kicking.

When I was introduced to k8s when migrating a large datacenter over to it, my initial impression was “this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of”. It’s incredible complexity compared to solutions like Xen seemed destined to doom it to the pile of overcomplicated Google tech that seems good on paper and falls down for normal people.

However in the years since I’ve come to really enjoy the ecosystem and the stack itself. There is a learning curve, but the payoff is pretty amazing. You can scale applications to truly global sized without exponential increases in headcount. The ecosystem of third party software around k8s keeps getting better.

So thanks for allowing me to pay my rent #kubernetes. Also YAML is the devil.

#devops #infrastructure

matdevdug, 4 days ago to apple

I want to meet the person at #Apple who decided when running #macos updates to allow the progress bar to get to the end and then go back to 0 again. What does “progress bar” mean to you?

Excuse the dirty screen, but this is the 4th time the progress bar has completed, then restarted back at zero. Is something wrong? I don’t know, because Apple has removed all useful information. Can I see a log? None of the log shortcuts work.

You might as well get rid of the progress bar and show a random sequence of numbers going up to 100 and then starting again if the update isn’t over. They convey exactly the same amount of information.

matdevdug, 3 days ago to php

May god have mercy on the souls of those sad people running #php on #windows and who now have a serious CVE. https://devco.re/blog/2024/06/06/security-alert-cve-2024-4577-php-cgi-argument-injection-vulnerability-en/