owen

owen, 9 months ago to random

You, sobbing: you can't just point at something and call it a directory service!

Me, checking a YAML file into Git: directory service

owen, 9 months ago to random

I wonder if anyone's done any research on the net increase in internet traffic caused directly by VPN products such as NordVPN and friends (excluding things like corporate VPNs, where traffic leaving the VPN is usually bound for the network it connects to).

Like, NordVPN, by design, doubles the amount of load each user puts on the internet overall (before compression), because every packet has to be sent twice - once from the user to NordVPN, and once from NordVPN to its final destination.

mcc, 9 months ago to random

Speaking as a resident of Ontario, this doesn't sound convenient to me at all.

mjg59, 9 months ago to random

"Huh, that's interesting. I don't know what's going on here" is, it turns out, rather more concerning when it's coming from your ophthalmologist and the conversation isn't about software

owen, 9 months ago to random

I wish every developer who picks json-without-comments as a developer-facing interface to something a very I hope your dinner turns out badly.

owen, 9 months ago to random

Canada has a surprisingly long legislative history of recognizing human rights for children on the same basis as human rights for adults, and of moderating those rights in the interests of parental care very carefully. For example, Canada near-universally recognizes the "mature minor" doctrine for medical self-determination, and children are considered to have the right to freedom of expression on the same basis as adults even on sensitive subjects such as sexual self-expression.

owen, 9 months ago to random

I don't know how to make it any clearer that I'm completely serious:

We need homeless legislators. We need legislators who are minors. We need legislators who are refugees. We need legislators who are disabled.

We need legislators from EVERY walk of life that gets structurally excluded from how law and policy get made.

owen, 9 months ago to random

COBOL embraces a truth about business software that more modern stacks are loathe to even consider: businesses are bureaucracies, which run on systems of record management. Record processing, of one form or another, is the only universal way for a computer to facilitate a business.

owen, 9 months ago to random

My mother's longtime friend, Angel, went to sleep about ten days ago, after a long and complicated life. She was a good dog, and she will be missed.

A couple of nights ago, right before waking, I dreamed that my mother asked me to help her with something. In a bag containing parts of Angel, I found her heart, and cleaned out the last of her blood and dressed it for her so that she could preserve it as a memento.

I feel lighter, somehow.

mcc, 9 months ago to random

Come visit THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE

We got:

• Situations
• Sense-impressions
• Money

AND NOW FEATURING, FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY:

• Pandas
• Sentient life
• Tacos

leigh, 9 months ago to random

Me, after an evening of escalating puns and verbal shitposts: “@andrew, can we get the 12’ skeleton?”

Andrew, beleaguered: “go to bed sweetie”

🤣

owen, 9 months ago to random

This meeting could have been foretold in prophecy.

mhoye, 9 months ago to random

Of all the things this meeting could have been, "an email" is the least interesting possibility.

We can do better.

mhoye, 9 months ago to random

Proposal: ban private vehicle subsidies.

No curb cuts, parking priced as high as the market will bear. No laws saying houses need driveways or that apartments need parking spots. No manufacturer subsidies. Curb-weight taxes for street maintenance, life-of-the-vehicle fuel efficiency taxes to cover the cost of environmental cleanup from the exhaust.

If car owners had to pay what cars actually cost instead of foisting those costs off on society we'd find out fast that cars are a ponzi scheme.

emilymbender, 9 months ago to random

I use Mastodon for public scholarship, because that is one of the main benefits I see to public/open social media. It's how I used Twitter and I've definitely benefited from other people using social media this way.

But in my experience, Mastodon is 'splainy AF, which is exhausting. Just this morning, a gentleman decided I would benefit from an explanation of GIGO, FFS.

So, while I never insist on titles, I'm going to include mine in my display name for a while, to see if that helps.

owen, 10 months ago to random

I am once again asking unix developers to learn the distinction between a shell RC file and a shell profile. It's a useful distinction, and I will happily acknlowedge that it's a non-obvious one, but it matters - particularly if you might run a shell inside your shell (eg. with find(1) or similar).

owen, 10 months ago to random

Someone in an discord casually mentioned that their org has a blanket approval for anything MIT-licensed but won't even consider GPLed code because the cost of case-by-case analysis of compliance is too high to be worth it.

That's how cheaply we've been selling ourselves out. https://hachyderm.io/@illegalhex/110868642479798306

owen, 10 months ago to random

You ever think about how Google de-spined - destroyed - literal tonnes of books donated by university libraries, with the intention of scanning them into a digital free library, and how none of that ever materialized?

Those books are just gone now, instead.