sean

sean, 11 months ago to bitwarden

I guess I’ll be spending tomorrow figuring out best practices for self-hosting #Bitwarden’s server component (or #KeePass) on something I can safely access via @tailscale, since my 15+ year relationship with #1Password is finally catastrophically and utterly failing me.

Should I open up a Zoom as some sort of support group so we can suffer together?

sean, 10 months ago to random

A really annoying dark pattern I see over and over:

• start using an app or service
• agree to receive notifications such as “your car is here” or “someone replied to you”
• time passes
• app or service starts abusing notifications to get me to engage via promotions or even plain advertising

Often my easiest recourse there is to turn off the app’s notification privileges.

Abusive, short-sighted, and dumb. You’re never getting that permission back.

sean, 6 months ago to random

Difficult things about coding in multiple languages (especially with different genealogies) in any given workday:

1. the reflex of adding : or { to control structures—especially for languages that make heavy use of switch…case
2. remembering if it’s null, nil, or None
3. namingConventions and naming_conventions

sean, 9 months ago to random

It’s occurred to me that Twitter moving over to 𝕏 and the “process" of squashing most-everything that made it once-great is not totally unlike this questionable-at-best trend of turning beers into candy and milkshakes.

sean, 1 year ago to random

When I do deployments for most things, my target is 0 seconds of downtime.

If something needs to be migrated, we figure out how to make it forward-compatible so we can deploy without downtime.

The SAAQ (#quebec's DMV) has a service that has been down all month, and I've been told by support that it will be back in March. That's at least 2 months.

When people say things like "government is terrible at everything" this kind of thing is why.

https://saaq.gouv.qc.ca/en/online-services/citizens/replacing-damaged-defective-licence-plate/

sean, 1 month ago to random

Web in 2024 (vs 10 or even 5 years ago):

✅ servers: disks and CPU so much faster; RAM so much cheaper
✅ browsers running on so much more powerful hardware
✅ technologies like CDNs moving delivery so much closer to users
✅ connection speeds—on average—so much faster

❌ page load times and performance hilariously, stupidly, so much worse in almost all cases

sean, 6 months ago to Montreal

#Montreal / #Quebec folks: anyone know if the liquor/wine import monopoly (#SAQ) is going to bless us with availability on #Beaujolais Nouveau day, tomorrow? Or will this be like 2022 when they didn't bother and we're just out of luck because monopoly?

sean, 13 days ago to random

I know retro tech is big right now, but I never expected this kind of grassroots anti-TCP campaign!

(Yes, this is a 90s joke that barely 8 of you will get.)

sean, 3 months ago to random

Mostly fine: log in by password
Mostly fine: log in by password OR code/link sent by email
Better: password and then TOTP
Annoying: log in by email only
Completely useless: log in by password and then require “multi-factor” by making me do something with an email

(I can reset my password via email; so the password bit is useless if you’re forcing me to log in by email after that anyway.)

Please stop this. It’s far worse than not doing it.

sean, 4 months ago to random

GANDI seems to have lost all ability to process existing credit cards, due to a botched migration.

Always happy to see when AWS / Route 53 adds new TLDs so I can avoid external registrars.

sean, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

It has come to my attention that we don’t all pronounce this word the same way.

How many syllables does the word “jujubes” have?

(Boost for reach if this is also surprising to you.)

sean, 6 months ago to Montreal

There are lots of things that make our bilingual (and truly multi-lingual… hello allophones) society here in #Montreal interesting and fun. Sometimes it's a pain, but we tolerate things like the inefficiency (~2x as much time) of announcements and speeches made in both french and english (even though nearly everyone understands both languages).

One thing that gets me a LOT, though, is MM-DD-YYYY in english and DD-MM-YYYY in french. It makes stuff like automating document scanning a real pain.

sean, 4 months ago to random

This increasingly-popular pattern of “you don’t have a password, we’ll just email you a token each time you log in” is truly obnoxious for those of us who have a good password/security practice.

sean, 2 months ago to random

Can someone remind me why I have a bad opinion of Docker on Mac? They rug-pulled us somehow, right?

I remember that this was a big deal at the time. But it seems like 500 worse things have happened since then, so I forget exactly. I haven’t used it since that falling-out.

Honest question.

sean, 1 year ago to random

We do a real dumb thing with #pizza in #Montreal. Most generic pizza places here put the pepperoni (which is unusually large diameter discs) between the sauce and the cheese.

Not only does this totally miss the opportunity of making your pepperoni extra delicious when it crisps up in the oven heat, but it creates an entirely stupid layer with nearly zero shear strength so all of your toppings slide off each time you pick up a hot slice.

sean, 8 months ago to random

When did arcades turn into ticket casinos for children? 👀

sean, 8 months ago to github

Having a hard time with #GitHub’s MacOS runners for actions.

They seem to have poor CPU slicing/allocation, and they’re charging 10x the Linux price. Pretty rough paying 10x for something to run so artificially slow (runs very fast on my local MacBook Pro; sometimes it takes 30+ minutes for the iPhone Simulator to start up on the GH runner). Is this just Azure not being very good?

Anyone else experiencing this? Got any tips (short of: manage your own runners elsewhere)?

sean, 7 months ago to random

“Be sure to mark your calendar for December 12th as [we] will be releasing an exciting gas safety solution for customers and industry professionals, worldwide.”

You may be overplaying your hand, company that I bought my CO2 meter from.

sean, 3 months ago to random

Google Maps is now on google.com/maps instead of maps.google.com/ .

Cynical-me has to wonder if this is related to their cookie siloing market capture play…

sean, 10 months ago to Montreal

#Tornado Watch for #Montreal is a totally normal thing and is not yet another bit of extreme weather and an indication that the planet is indeed burning⸮

https://weather.gc.ca/warnings/report_e.html?qcrm2=

🌪️

sean, 2 months ago to random

For the past ~2 years, I’ve been working on a neuroscience startup (called Matter). We have an app that—by its nature—needs to operate on private user data. Some of that data is so private that we never actually want to handle it ourselves. So we don’t.

We can’t leak data we don’t have. We can’t mishandle private info that never leaves the control of the user.

We’re taking a mostly-unique approach to user data at Matter, and I’ve finally written a little bit about it:

https://seancoates.com/blogs/matter-and-privacy

sean, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

ELI5: how does burning 4,712kg of jet fuel emit 16 tons (14,515kg) of CO2?

Edit: is it the oxygen? I could believe that, but it seems like a lot without doing any math.

sean, 7 months ago to random

I mostly only use Siri for “set a timer for 4 minutes” and “tomorrow at 2pm remind me …”

Today I got a reminder that I’d clearly created with Siri: “check on the Spanish mix”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to be. This happens often enough that I should know better than to trust Siri without checking the readback.

So… any idea what rhymes with “spanish mix”?

sean, 6 months ago to random

Despite having time-based code (TOTP) multi-factor sign-in set up on Mailchimp for a long time now, they keep harassing me for my phone number.

Finally, today, they made me validate via SMS because of “inconsistent activity on my account”, but it’s clearly just a personal information grab, not a security measure (they didn’t have my phone number before this).

This makes me question their entire security practice and value to our organization.

sean, 7 months ago to random

This is the second notification from this app that I absolutely did not ask for, today.

Of course no one measures for this, but it’s the kind of thing that will push me over the edge of motivation to finally get rid of this appliance and switch to something less invasive, forever.