@swelljoe@mas.to
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

swelljoe

@swelljoe@mas.to

Born tired. Likes bikes and hikes. Sometimes I work on Open Source software. Other times I work on robots. I remember when computers were good. He/him.

Did you alt text your image? It'd be a lot cooler if you did.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

The abusive behavior that was being used to manipulate Lasse Collin into bringing on more maintainers for went unnoticed because abusive behavior in Open Source communities is so pervasive. In context, we can clearly see it was part of an orchestrated operation. Out of context, it looks like just another asshole complaining about stuff they have no right to complain about. https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2024/03/30/a-microcosm-of-the-interactions-in-open-source-projects/

swelljoe, to linux
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Does everyone understand how much luck was involved in this exploit in being discovered so quickly? And, what it tells us about the attacker?

This was a subtle and sophisticated attack implemented over years. The attacker was made a co-maintainer two years ago, and they made numerous innocuous-looking and seemingly unrelated changes over that time, sometimes through a second account, that eventually added up to a backdoor. Along with many innocent commits, too.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I'm concerned that the noise in anti-LLM criticism is masking the signal. There are so many things that make people uncomfortable about "AI", that I think the folks who are very excited about it can interpret the criticisms in a way that doesn't have value.

What I mean by this is that even if you completely disregard the ethics, the legality, and the environmental cost of LLMs, you should still understand that they're a scam. An amazing parlor trick, but a trick, nonetheless.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Maggie's first house (the one that burned down) is for sale in Roslyn, WA. It is, of course, wildly overpriced. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/107-W-Washington-Ave-Roslyn-WA-98941/61116213_zpid/

swelljoe, to linux
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I know people love hating on #systemd but there are so many things that are great about it. The journal is among the best (and the one that people seem to hate the most for reasons I find hard to relate to). Building a service with good logging is literally free, no code required, STDOUT/STDERR goes to the journal, you're done. Ingesting those logs into something like Loki is also free. #linux

swelljoe, to python
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

is so exhausting. DeprecationWarning: 'crypt' is deprecated and slated for removal in Python 3.13. Despite there being no replacement in the standard library that can reasonably generate a Linux compatible SHA512 hashed password. hashlib won't do it, at least not without a lot more code than I can figure out. Googling it, I only find a lecture about SHA512 not being secure (it's fine with rounds=210000, according to OWASP). passlib is not in the standard library.

swelljoe, to Texas
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Gonna have one more go at finding Franny a home in or or ? before I have to drop her off at the shelter Saturday (appointment is at 4:45PM CST; in ~14 hours). She's a total sweetheart, good with kids, dogs, cats. Gets separation anxiety when left alone, though this is easing with time, and she's not quite housetrained, but she's getting there. Walks great on a leash, learns fast, listens extremely well. Franny's story is in this thread: https://mas.to/@swelljoe/111355353303173124

A white and blonde husky wrestling with a black pit bull.
A white and blonde husky with piercing grey eyes is playing with a black pit bull in a gravel yard.
A white and blonde husky with pale grey eyes looks excitedly toward the camera with her ears pressed back.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

LED light bulbs are such a disaster. Absurdly short lifespan for a device that's alleged to last for years; I have some incandescent bulbs that were here when I moved in that have outlasted some of the LEDs I installed. Either they start flickering, or they get so dim as to be unusable. Should be illegal to sell this garbage. LEDs absolutely can last for years, but they're choosing to manufacture them not to. Recently started buying Philips, the most expensive ones, hoping they last longer.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Web apps keep screwing me. I'm going back to doing everything in vim. What's the current best practice for todo/task lists in vim? Ideally, with checkboxes and such, but not a lot of heavy structure (I don't want Jira, I just want a nice todo list I can check in to git and edit in vim or NeoVIM)? Maybe some Markdown thing?

swelljoe, to transit
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I bought a JBL Bluetooth boombox type thing (I don't know what you call what used to be a boombox...portable audio...thing?) and was struggling to come up with how to hang it on my bike. Searched for a holder or bracket or something, found one, and thought, "Wait a minute...that looks like a water bottle cage." Sure enough, it drops right into a regular old water bottle cage. So, I will not be spending seventeen more dollars to hang it on a

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I figured out the food I buy for my dogs (and for my cat) is more expensive than my own food (even some takeout!). I could cook every meal from scratch for these critters for less money.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Roslyn is named Roslyn because they shot the show in a town called Roslyn, Washington, and there was a mural with "Roslyn Cafe" on it (which got an apostrophe s added). http://www.roslynmuseum.com/northern-exposure.html

swelljoe, to neovim
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Fourth time's the charm? Been trying to switch to #Neovim for a couple months. First tried writing my own config from scratch, got frustrated, tried a couple of distributions, found that even more frustrating (they do too much and changed old vim defaults, which is intolerable, so I had to undo a lot). Blew it all away today and started again with the "kickstart" (https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim), which is immediately more palatable to my old vim soul. No weird keymaps (Lazyvim changes s|S!?).

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

There's a huge opportunity for a good search engine that isn't poisoned by AI lies...but, the technical challenge of keeping out the poison is maybe insurmountable without the resources of a Google or Microsoft, who seem to have no interest in removing the poison from their search results. So, the internet just sucks now, I guess, and will continue to suck for the foreseeable future, while they fight over who can shovel the most shit onto the pile.

swelljoe, to neovim
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

Never been madder at a piece of software than just now when some plugin in (which I'm trying again) silently converted spaces to tabs on save.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I am just now realizing I've seen Adam (Adam Arkin) in dozens of things, and never recognized him because the hair/dirt.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I only go to ChatGPT out of desperation and one of these days I'm going to realize it's only going to waste my time. If I can't find a solution by reading the docs, the source code, and a bunch of experimentation, ChatGPT is just going to make up some plausible sounding bullshit (wrong in a different way every time I rephrase the question).

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I see the spam discourse is underway, so let me recommend Discourse (the forum software) for a source of good ideas for implementing spam filters that work surprisingly well. It does things like auto-flag "New user typed their first post suspiciously fast", prevents new users from performing some actions like PMing a lot of people, silences a new user if flagged by trusted users. And, it has levels of user trust that are automatic based on past posts, new users can't post a bunch in one day.

swelljoe, to StarTrek
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

In the past couple weeks I've seen DS9 referred to as the best Trek series, as though everyone agreed and there was no real debate on the topic. It's always been and remains my favorite, but I didn't think it was universally agreed upon. Did I miss the great Trekkie reorientation, is this a new phenomenon? Did millennials and gen Z tip the balance as older Trekkies left the planet? Or was it always so and it just wasn't as widely acknowledged?

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

@mozilla is so fucked. "But AI has given the nonprofit foundation and its cofounder Baker a fresh sense of mission..." And, by proxy, we're all so fucked. There is once again browser hegemony, and the unavoidably dominant browser is owned by a surveillance company whose intrusiveness in our lives would have made Microsoft blush in the IE days. And, the new Mozilla mission is fancy autocomplete? https://web.archive.org/web/20240208151354/https://fortune.com/2024/02/08/mozilla-firefox-ceo-laura-chambers-mitchell-baker-leadership-transition/

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

If there's one thing about me, I'm gonna type that old command name, no matter how long I've known about better newer alternatives. wget, tcpdump, iwconfig, screen, ls, grep. I finally started typing ip instead of ifconfig and route habitually a year or two ago, because it's shorter and does everything.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

"It moved rapidly, going at least twenty miles an hour. It shot across the skies" UFOs have gotten a lot faster in 128 years. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957514/1896-mystery-airship-bay-area-ufo-history-victorian-aliens

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

All for $11.95. That is a good deal, even in 1991 dollars.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

As someone who's bought a lot of expensive equipment over the years, both for professional purposes and hobbies, here's some advice: if there are companies that specialize in the thing you are buying, buy from them rather than Amazon or another big box store, even if it costs a little more. This isn't about ethics, though the ethics of Amazon are certainly worthy of discussion. It's about the value of your time and your odds of getting screwed by unscrupulous Amazon sellers.

swelljoe, to random
@swelljoe@mas.to avatar

I feel like Procol Harum somehow references The Big Chill, but I don't remember the film well enough to know how. I think there was maybe a dead old friend in that, too?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • cubers
  • osvaldo12
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • normalnudes
  • InstantRegret
  • rosin
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • ethstaker
  • Leos
  • ngwrru68w68
  • everett
  • cisconetworking
  • tacticalgear
  • anitta
  • thenastyranch
  • Durango
  • tester
  • GTA5RPClips
  • modclub
  • megavids
  • provamag3
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •