@underlap@fosstodon.org
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

underlap

@underlap@fosstodon.org

Husband, father, grandfather, follower of Jesus, but very much a work in progress.

Retired software developer, visiting lecturer, IETF editor. Likes repairability. BTW I use arch.

Hobbies: reading, blogging, running, sailing.

Delighted to live in Winchester, UK. Involved in a local church.

Banner: Derwent Water
Profile picture: Dorset coast

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

Gammitin, to random
@Gammitin@mastodon.social avatar

The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, published in September 1992.
I first ventured onto the world wide web in 92' amazing times and memories, what an adventure!

underlap, (edited )
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@Gammitin I first encountered the web by using gopher to retrieve raw HTML documents from a few academic and government sites. The ability to peek out of IBM's internal network into this new, open, Narnia-like world was so exciting. (Eventually I heard of a browser which automated the process and rendered the HTML into a readable form.)

https://underlap.org/early-internet-access

amoroso, to VintageOSes
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

A young developer who never used Windows 98 back in the day stumbled upon an introductory book on the operating system and posted his impressions on skimming it, which brought him joy. He wrote:

"I was also left with the impression that perhaps I would like more software to come with a physical manual."

https://jamesg.blog/2024/05/19/windows-98-manual

#windows98 #documentation #retrocomputing

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@amoroso Not sure a physical manual is strictly necessary, but good documentation is precious.

a2, to random
@a2@a2.io avatar

As someone with a single-user Mastodon instance, I'm wondering how to go about addressing some of the issues that @erinc brought up here
https://mull.net/mastodon

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@a2 @erinc Note that you can place your own handle in front of your current Mastodon handle if you like, although Mastodon dereferences it immediately. See https://guide.toot.as/guide/use-your-own-domain/ . Not great, but better than nothing in terms of your stated aims.

sandboxgeneral, to archlinux
@sandboxgeneral@fosstodon.org avatar

paccache command from the pacman-contrib package is a wonderful command. I just cleared over 6GB of cache from / with the command.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Cleaning_the_package_cache

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@sandboxgeneral Thanks. I just reclaimed 22 GB.

massonpj, to opensource
@massonpj@fosstodon.org avatar

MUST READ if you work on, use, support #OpenSource in #HigherEd":

Office of the National Cyber Director told RSA Conference attendees the White House is developing legal clauses that shift software liability away from customers and more onto manufacturers.

"Another proposal on the table would be SHARED LIABILITY BETWEEN OPEN-SOURCE MAINTAINERS AND FOR-PROFIT FIRMS who integrate those open tools into their products, he added."

#EdTech #HigherEducation #OpenScience

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/05/white-house-talks-industry-build-legal-framework-software-liability/396330/

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@massonpj Hmmm: "shared liability between open-source maintainers and for-profit firms who integrate those open tools into their products".

So if my code's license says I am free from any liability, would it be the for-profit firms' responsibility to avoid using my code?

Or would US law override my license? 😱

/cc @webmink

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@webmink @massonpj @osi Would it be counter to OSI philosophy to introduce a license that could move the liability for an open source component to the for-profit firm that integrates the component? In other words, for-profit firms would then have to take over the liability for an open source component with such a license before using it.

wader, to random
@wader@fosstodon.org avatar

Yesterday I read the recently published JSONPath RFC (RFC9535) and listening to an interview with one of the creators of SQL https://www.datacamp.com/podcast/50-years-of-sql-with-don-chamberlin and worst of all i poked around in sqlite code to figure out how the scheme table works...guess I just have to accept that I'm a query language nerd.

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@wader Good progress - thanks for the update. Have you broached function extensions yet? If so, how about the regexp functions? These are the main "icebergs" in the spec IMO.

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@wader Yeah, should be fine™ 😉

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@wader The good news (or it is bad?) is that the CTS is pretty weak in relation to regexps, so you should pass even if your implementation is buggy!

sotolf, to random
@sotolf@alpha.polymaths.social avatar

So here is what @Mojeek has to say about me... Seriously? So they are actively making death threats? This is really kind of scary, how is this a "good" feature?

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@sotolf @Mojeek That's terrible. (I checked and DDG's search results were harmless.)

maegul, (edited ) to tech
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

Is there an established term/neologism for the whole tech-bro attitude/belief/common-response of

"there is no UI issue, this is a good tool, anyone who's bothered to learn it understands this ... you just have a skill issue"

vimism? (genuine suggestion for a genuine question ... it's the term my brain uses)

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@maegul Over-complicated?

cory, to tech
@cory@social.lol avatar

📝: Boring is good https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/boring-is-good/

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@cory When I worked on the IBM CICS transaction monitor, our customers used to praise new releases when they were really boring (to upgrade to). That showed how much effort was put into backward compatibility, migration, co-existence, etc..

timbray, to UKpolitics
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Will the Mastobrits please converge on a hashtag for the July 4th election? Kthksby.

Candidates:

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@timbray Just filter out those three for starters? 😉

cory, to random
@cory@social.lol avatar

At some point do we block Google’s crawler altogether too?

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@cory I guess we might have to.

I use DDG for search, but found out it uses Bing's search index, and I suspect Bing's crawlers may eventually need blocking too (if not already!).

So we could end up with portions of the indieweb that are not searchable using popular search engines.

Seems there's a (small) gap in the market for an AI-free search engine.

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@cory Or possibly @StartpageSearch, although I can't figure out which search index they use or if they have their own and a privacy-respecting web crawler.

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@cory @frederic Frederic: I wrote a NGINX plugin that blocks user agents from a robots.txt file. Doesn't depend on knowing IP addresses. It may be of interest.

underlap, to archlinux
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

Since replacing my graphics card in March, my arch system crashes on resume 20% of the time. I don't see any obvious cause in the logs, so I finally cracked and posted a discussion thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=296050

underlap, (edited )
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@asynchronaut Sounds like a great result.

My new AMD graphics card was cheap and works well too. Just suspend/resume fails 20% of the time...

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@normyp @asynchronaut But note that NVIDIA is not immune to suspend/resume problems: https://gist.github.com/glyn/b61d087f08f9ed0e0ca051228ed1676a

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@asynchronaut Thanks Holger - that's really useful information!

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@asynchronaut Yes, I'm using the "radeon" driver. 😞

underlap,
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@normyp @asynchronaut I have no idea, sorry.

underlap, to random
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

@Gammitin If you haven't watched this before, I suspect it's right up your street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk

underlap, to threads
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

Every time I dip into Threads it's a complete and utter waste of time. They'd better up their game before they finish implementing federation. 😂

underlap, to softwaretesting
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

An interesting question on Quora:

"Should software testing be an incremental, staged activity? Also people argue that developers should not be involved in testing their own code but that all testing should be the responsibility of a separate team. why is that?"

Here's a (long) corker of an answer by a close friend of mine: https://qr.ae/pseyG6

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