JimmyChezPants 🇨🇦

Neurodivergent Manitoba Interlake settler (Zone 3, Treaty One). He/Him/Hobbit. Consort to [@lakelaur](https://mastodon.social/@lakelaur ).
I do stuff and believe in sharing.
Pic is a m̶i̶d̶d̶l̶e̶ a̶g̶e̶d̶ b̶e̶a̶r̶d̶e̶d̶ w̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ d̶u̶d̶e̶ cat leaning in, a little bit sideways, with one eyebrow very raised, looking skeptical af
Very tired of fascists and their endless bullshit.
#HistoryNeverEnded #BlackLivesMatter If I'm missing a Hashtag that annoys Fascists and Neoliberals, please advise, but consider it here in my heart already.

github: https://github.com/jpaskaruk
Move Slow: Fix Things

Public Key

npub105khtk0mulzdkcln5pq7mx354cg84n5y32nslgf7grcragkyrh4qytjs0x

NIP-05 Address

jpaskaruk_at_growers.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs86tt4m8a703xmv0e6qs0dng62uyr6e6zg4fc05ylypup75tzpm6spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdf9drq

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub105khtk0mulzdkcln5pq7mx354cg84n5y32nslgf7grcragkyrh4qytjs0x

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Last Notes

2026-10-23 21:06:56 UTC

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One of those childhood things that was worse than you remember...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzIxa2LKjp4

2026-10-15 12:36:29 UTC

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Brother, you will fail to enjoy this if you don't resolve yourself to the fact that you have stepped away from the capitalists' bullshit for a reason, but that *also* means you no longer get to live in their fancy walled compound where your sheets are magically changed every time you leave the bedroom by little robots shaped like christmas elves.
I snark, but basically, expect features to not be implemented (yet!), *or* for those features to be conceptualized and named in a way you find very strange and dumb.
I'm failing to understand where aspect ratio comes into a drawing program though, but that's because I'm not an artist. But I have done a fair bit of work with Inkscape, can you expand on what you're trying to do here? You want to pop a circle into existence, and then enter the radius in a dialog box? Cause I'm pretty sure we can hook that up.
Most importantly, remember why you left the garden, or if the garden now looks better (tell me you're gainfully employed without telling me you're gainfullly employed), head on back without complaining about the free gift version. You got your money's worth.

2026-10-13 15:07:55 UTC

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Cheers for the unsolicited review. I assume those are the type with a mic integrated for phone calls?
Cause I have this cool new vest that I got over the summer, which has a nice pocket to hold my phone up near my head, so a nice wired set could dangle out of that zippered pocket pretty minimally, so I'm kinda wanting a decent set of wired guys.

2026-10-07 19:08:07 UTC

I dream of a world where we have learned that it is pointless to seek to redeem anyone's soul but your own, and focus on dulling the impact of those sins to a simple and rational resource drain.
So for instance, we have homeless people, and the only way they can get help right now is by showing they have worked to deserve help, and so we all have to live in a world where suffering plays out before our eyes every time we walk down the street, while our social institutions, our hospitals, emergency services, are all drained dealing with exploding personal crises that pile up by the day, never going down.
But too many of us have only an idiot application of reactive force as choices of which they can conceive, and so the clusterfuck slowly consumes us all. We could, rather, just give them all homes, give them a safe supply of whatever they are using to comfort their minds and a safe place to consume it, and enough public health workers and supports to make sure they do not worsen, or at least, that if they do, supports are ready.
Instead, it's just more cops, more prisons, and more lives fed into the meatgrinder. This is all that our "traditional" "conservative" people have to offer, anymore. If our public institutions are imploding under the weight of capitalist society, well, time to let the private sector in, for those who've got theirs, and fuck you if you think you deserve better, plebe.
I'm really, really tired.

2026-09-30 00:51:44 UTC

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0 should be a choice on its own.

2026-09-29 20:16:59 UTC

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seriously? You can't make extra local accounts in a friggin Unix machine?

2026-09-25 14:36:37 UTC

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22 years since I last had a decent croissant (backpacking trip in 04).
One Paris morning I went out early to do laundry, and grabbed a couple croissants on the way. While the wash was running I ate them and then realized that the proper thing to do here was to go and buy More Croissants immediately and consume those also.
"But oh no," I thought, "the Parisians at the bakery will think I'm some American glutton!"
But I outsmarted them, I remembered that Paris bakeries are packed as densely as coffee shops in Seattle, so I just walked an extra block and retrieved my binge from the next bakery over.
It was as I turned around and beheld myself in a full length mirrored pillar, that I saw that my beard was verily lousy with croissant crumbs.
@npub1ksf…r6s6

2026-09-24 14:46:38 UTC

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Would love to know this too, because I have the capacity to build things that the Internet would probably want to buy as well, but I've never trusted any of this stuff, other than Ebay for a very short, harrowing period.
There's always the old ways: Send Money Order to this address, allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. 😜

2026-09-24 14:32:48 UTC

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please don't use Shopify. It's our little Canadian techscum. Omarchy donators.

2026-09-22 05:41:40 UTC

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Goddamit #USA will you reclaim some tiny shred of dignity already
I mean for fuck sakes

2026-09-18 19:01:27 UTC

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No idea who this is even aimed at, but it's my kinda snark.

2026-09-14 14:38:24 UTC

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Tortelvis is their singer on all things

2026-09-13 22:30:44 UTC

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cheers, I've always felt I should get on top of one or the other of those (or regex) but I fail at choosing.

2026-09-13 20:21:59 UTC

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I was being very unclear in my intent there, sorry
-A is a grep command line switch, which prints however many lines you specify After each hit. Since the trailing lines varied, but were all terminated by a blank line, I was looking for effectively "-A UntilBlankLine" as opposed to the string "-A".
Like I said, was not communicating very clearly there. :>

2026-09-13 20:18:05 UTC

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I was surprised to learn that Arts & Crafts was an actual movement at some point, not just a time period you do at summer camp.

2026-09-12 16:52:43 UTC

My hobby: deciding to do a deep dive on grep instead of an extra ten seconds of pageup/pagedown in order to distract myself from the three major-but-doable-but-never-actually-done-em-before tasks I have assigned myself today.
My other hobby: loading up Mastodon to toot about my struggles with focus, after catching myself after only wasting about a minute on the grep deep dive, but here's what I was trying to do:
The thing I am grepping for has a number of hits, each of them with a varying number of -A lines needed to quickly get the information I need. While this data is not reliably sized, it *is* trailed by a blank line, so what I would like grep to do, is find the terms I give it, and then -A until it sees a blank line.
Probably Id need to deep dive regex for that.
Haha.
Send me your witchy focusing mojo, fedi, for I need it more now than ever before.
#AuDHD
I was less tweaked going into every single one of my University finals. Gaaah!

2026-09-11 14:55:01 UTC

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fuck what I was gonna order a Commodore phone

2026-09-10 03:02:15 UTC

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I might have voted if there was a "stop drinking the poo-flavour koolaid" option

2026-09-06 19:09:34 UTC

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that is definitely... I can't think of a more masterful yet absolutely right segue.

2026-09-05 14:59:14 UTC

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I was speaking from an Admin/Dev standpoint, not user.
But the effort required from admins and devs is a factor in the ease of use of any project; ultimately, if it's to be considered easy, we have to take into account the need to either hire or inspire talent.
To publish RSS (as I understand it), you add an endpoint to your website where your content is presented into a parseable format that readers can present in their context, and you format your content accordingly. That's basically a markup language, unless there's more going on behind the scenes with RSS that I don't comprehend, and anyone can understand a markup language, if they're willing to try.
ActivityPub, on the other hand, has to talk to a lot of other AP things, on an ongoing basis. There is Compute and Network Connectivity and Databases involved. That's hard. You have to point those highly vulnerable things at the public-facing Internet. That's *treacherous*.
You might, if you can hire or inspire enough talent, and also fund the thing, make it just as easy for the end user, but don't act like that's easy. Or necessarily even good.
edit: read first couple paragraphs of blog. You're basically saying we can use a subset of AP formatting in a one-way manner to replace RSS... which, if someone chooses to boost it on Mastodon, will be automatically transformed *back* into RSS...
I think we should just use RSS, and remember Aaron. I tell my friends who are not here but who might want to keep track of my ongoing public meltdowns and outrages that the good news is, they can follow me on RSS without any need to join Mastodon. I suppose I'm worried about inceptions beginning to happen, and circular conversions.
edit 2: I can see the purpose for it, *if* it's a 2-way thing that allows Mastodon accounts to act as the comment section, and that's what I assumed you were talking about in the poll.

2026-09-05 13:54:08 UTC

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...but it never will be.

2026-08-27 20:53:48 UTC

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Good good stuff mang. Any chance I can start alpha testing it myself yet?

2026-08-26 16:29:54 UTC

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Quite the same here in Winnipeg - we had nazis in the 90s, they made the local tabloids, but by the time I got my first punk band together in 1999, they were highly unwelcome at shows and in the streets.
Then only fifteen-odd years later, it's 2016, and some of the punk kids who actually *did* the street fighting (I am a wimp, did not street fight, but friends of mine did), they're doing the "I'm not gonna call my neighbours nazis! Stop being a bully to alternate viewpoints!"
But yah, I think about some of TG's stuff from the 70s, Zykkon B Zombie and such, and the penchant among UK punks to put swastikas on everything. Understandable, but also not cool.

2026-08-26 16:21:34 UTC

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I remember a lot highly ambiguous imagery and such in that time. I do not recall ordering stuff from that label, I was more of a poseur I think cause I arrived via Ministry's rebranded Metal, and never delved all that deeply into anything that didn't have any guitar on it.
But I flipped a lot of record bins and whatnot, and there was a lot of nazi stuff in there, which I always charitably attributed to "no horror is greater than the soul of man" kinda stuff. Clearly, too charitably.

2026-08-20 21:47:33 UTC

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...also, I will be a helpful testing user at some point soon, but probably not in the next week, cause I just booked an interview for a job that I reeeeeeeeeally wanna get and I'm gonna be cramming on the subject matter until next thursday.
But, since the day I decided that Windows was not a price I was any longer willing to pay, I have looked annoyedly at that Ableton license. Extra salt on that is that I bought Suite, thinking that all the instruments and samples I was buying, could be used in other software like VSTs. I still don't know that I will adopt it as a tool again, though I had good and fun results when I was using it before.
Full Push support, I assume? Don't have one yet but this makes it highly likely I will at some point.

2026-08-20 21:41:57 UTC

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I think I might love you a little bit.

2026-08-20 20:33:23 UTC

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I wow
Question: I think my license is 11 - how difficult do you think it would be to add that version support? I could upgrade eventually but I'm quite skint right now, and I never thought this would happen, I have tried to sell the license more than once, not for hating Ableton, but I refuse to go back to Windoze.

2026-08-19 20:22:29 UTC

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There is a burning hope in my chest that this is all to get past the peril of October - at the moment it's a lot of promises and not that much action - and then do something better.
Problem, I don't see him doing much about the firehose of shit coming from the plutes, and it won't be that hard to get people putting up Fuck Carney flags, if they decide he's not keeping their boots clean enough.

2026-08-19 18:47:02 UTC

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I don't wanna tag anyone in, but I know a number of #blind folks who are probably gonna be *all over* this.
Being able to hold something up in front of you and read it is a thing we sighted take for granted, and we rarely give a single thought to making things accessible. If they (at least, those who can afford a pair, but I will sign petitions and join marches in which we demand that all blind people are equipped with them for free) are now able to do that, I mean, *fantastic*. I'm sure it works for computer screens as well, making it the ultimate Screen Reader too.
The only reason this is a privacy problem, is capitalism. I wish people would focus on that, cause if we deal with that, we won't have to complain about them doing what they are never gonna stop doing, until we make them stop.
with, you know, guillotines.

2026-08-19 08:45:09 UTC

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There's a "suite" of Free software that won't ever bother you about that, but it's a bunch of different projects. GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Krita, between them, should handle whatever Canva/Affinity do for you, albeit with some learning pain in the immediate moment.
You rebase your pipeline on these and other Free software, there will be momentary pain as you adopt the new ways of working, but, once that is integrated, you will never face another such rugpull in the name of profit for lazy scumbags who do not work, again.
It's not the easiest path, to uhh... libremaxxx your life. You lose more or less *all* convenience, and you'll be hearing about awesome features in mersh apps that are years away from the Free app, if ever. I briefly paid for Photoshop one time, just to try out the "Context Aware Fill" thingy, which was quite impressive to me. Frequently you have to work harder to get answers, though, Machine Learning will solve this in a datacentre-free manner, eventually, and if you're touching the corpo AI, it is shockingly good at answering detailed questions about obscure software.
But the more you move yourself into that Libre lifestyle, the more you recentre yourself on (and support) community-built tools, the less you are ever impacted by that bullshit. If it's Free (fuck Open Source), you can trust it.

2026-08-14 12:53:38 UTC

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I wish I had a SuperBoost button. That would, you know, boost, but Super.

2026-08-14 12:46:25 UTC

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My take on nukes is, they probably should not have gone down that road on any level in the first place, because when they did, they committed thousands of years of subsequent generations to the maintenance of nuclear waste sites. We should curse their names in perpetuity.
That said, they did that, and now we are doing that (maintaining and babysitting nuclear waste, for the rest of our lives and for many of our descendants' lives). That overhead will be paid, or we will have places in the world that murder people for reasons that nobody understands, except it has something to do with ancestors who meddled in the affairs of gods, and now they punish anyone who approaches the fruit of that knowledge. Regardless of what happens, the waste must be understood, and taken care of, like Those Who Must Be Kept, if you were ever an Anne Rice fan. It will sit there and ignore us, and we must pay constant attention to it. Curse their names, who cursed us thus.
But, since we are doing that, it actually *behooves* us to replace fossil use in Utility power installations, immediately, with as much of any non-emitting power we can deploy, and nuclear is a large non-emitting and safe if done right source, for this particular moment. Yes, the curse, but the curse cannot be lifted, unless we are going to rocket it into the sun, maybe, which, if one of those rockets happens to explode on the pad...
We need to stop with the fossils, today. People won't stop consuming power by choice. Let the curse give us some tiny bit of good.

2026-08-14 12:26:43 UTC

I wonder what Binface will do now. TV Show? Podcast? Talking Head on CNN? I know he runs in elections on the regular, but he needs another gig.

2026-08-03 19:59:33 UTC

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This doesn't get nearly enough replays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIdCsMufIY

2026-08-03 14:40:49 UTC

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Depends if the child is actually in distress, or merely attempting to get what they want through screaming. A parent can usually tell.

2026-08-01 16:20:45 UTC

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this should be a ranked answer, git would also do the job just fine.

2026-08-01 16:16:08 UTC

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I miss having homework

2026-07-26 15:56:32 UTC

@npub1ksf…r6s6 Advice beg incoming, but I think you won't mind providing a SOTU as far as Jails and documentation/training goes.
I'm reading a copy of your Jails book that was handed down, and I also watched some of one of your more recent webinars about em, in which you emphasized the danger of dated docs (realized I was getting the same info but better and more complete from the book, so went back to reading, for now).
Your book as I'm reading it, seems to be 2019 publish, talks a lot about iocage as the management solution of choice, and I can see the syntactic resonance with the zfs command and I like it,
but, is this still reflective of optimal tooling and practices today? I can see that the project is abandoned and taken over by FreeBSD, but is that going to be a persistent maintenance, do you think? Is there a preferred management app with a web gui, or is that more the job of the monitoring chapter?
I'm quite used to dealing with rampant bad documentation, after all I started with Linux, but I do not mind paying the tenner for a new e-edition, though I'm quite broke these days, if it is going to contain better stuff.
Or, is there a better thing to read nowadays, for both Jails and Network/pf stuff? I really need to get my head wrapped around network stuff again as well, it was never my favorite part of sysadminning...
I have decided to go to BSD for all my servers, as I pick up the skills to convert my dockers to jails and such. Linux emu will be used only as a last resort, I'll still have plenty of Linux desktops that can pinch hit a few services.

2026-07-21 15:03:58 UTC

I don't know if @npub1ksf…r6s6 has overtly commented on this, but I think my favorite thing about his tech manuals is the *cultural transmission* inherent to statements like
> Iocage can manage hundreds of your most
> common types of jail, freeing you up to painfully maintain a couple of festering
> hand-tweaked artisan jails that require their own exotic weirdness.
...which verily informs you, at a visceral level, that if you want to get into this form of wizardry, if you want to be the calm bearded sage in the LoudFansRoom, completely placid as you tame and direct the Daemons Of The Blinkenlights, you must remember that you live on the edge of utter futility at every moment. You must bring your own tility.
*murmuring of meditating BSD monks in the background grows louder. Jimmy backs off to one side, and gestures the camera to get closer. As it nears the long table, the voices resolve into a chant:*
NOTHING IS SECURE
EVERYTHING IS HORRIBLE
NOTHING IS SECURE
EVERYTHING IS HORRIBLE

2026-07-19 14:53:41 UTC

I want North America in the future to look like Cuba in (at this point it looks like) the past: absolutely lousy with classic cars that have been revived and maintained, except, through EV conversions.
I say over and over, next vehicle is electric for damn sure, but I do not want the bonus surveillance apparatus, I just want a gigantic road-legal battery bank that looks cool.
So probably an old pickup, but possibly that Nova SS I thought I would never actually get to own...

2026-07-05 14:07:44 UTC

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Canada has one perk, which is, we want you.

2026-05-27 12:17:26 UTC

I'm watching a Lemmy conversation with someone who vibe-coded a thing, I don't even know what the thing does other than it communicates using Telegram, which,
dude.
Anyways, he's trying to get people to use it, but he has not put the code anywhere. People are gamely trying to explain that this is an absolute dealbreaker as far as any self-hoster using it, and, I mean,
a vibe-coder guy is trying to be 1975 Bill Gates
I just can't. This is the world now.
I don't even think the guy is up to anything. No actual black hat would come off like this,
right?
It doesn't even matter if I can't read the code, if the thing gains steam, people who *can* will have a look at it once it's got profile. Nobody wants to hear your Slop music, and nobody wants to use your Slop app.
Get in yer fuckin lane. Ok time to drive.

2026-05-18 13:40:04 UTC

@npub1pp5…935s bought me a bandsaw today, Fedi. I am going to make spooky birdhouses with it. Also gay ones.
It's another On-Sale Mastercraft from Canadian Tire. The drill press and belt/disc sander previously bought are both very usable and very affordable machines.
Now that Sears is dead, it looks like The Spirit Of Affordable Tools That Are Not Garbage has migrated to CT. RIP Craftsman tools.

2026-04-19 02:29:00 UTC

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General comment on the thread, intended to be completely not-critical, just observational
Actually nah I don't know enough to actually have an opinion on the issue at hand at all, but things like this are interesting is all, I guess - there will be those tempted to shoehorn the incident into their preconceived notions of what is happening here, and I was one of those for a few hot seconds,
but what I see is exactly what one should expect to see, in what is still the very early stages of a networking system and network that is still rapidly evolving. People start things with those things, you know the things... intentions. Maybe good, maybe bad, but intentions. Gotta keep an on eye on intentions, yep.
And a lot of em probably neurodivergent, which means that statistically, some of em are just gonna crash or disappear, those intentioned humans, whether it's depression, war, ADHD, loss of employment, gaining of employment (this has caused me to ghost more than one personal project or trajectory)... so many reasons why people have to pack their bags or pick up their SHTF backpack and go.
A neglected server can limp along for a long while, but if it's neglected with open signups, that's a problem for the whole network. That's as close as I'm gonna come to my personal axe.

2026-03-27 19:00:35 UTC

yergen dergen schmergen

2026-03-07 23:55:02 UTC

I will also fight you about Daylight Savings Time. I'm for it.
Fight me cmon
I'll beat you cause I will get a good night's sleep, while you've got the sun shining in your eyes at 11pm like a chump

2026-02-20 19:02:36 UTC

I've got a temporary driving gig, occasional, for a fella with one of those car breathalyzer thingies and restricted free time.
Not here to argue that he should be given a pass for whatever happened.
But I am here to say that these devices should at least be designed to not kill his battery within 24 hours of being parked. We have spent a huge number of hours dealing with his car going dead and the machine interpreting that as a hack attempt, so he's having to make phone calls and
Basically nobody gives a shit so he gets shit response times on the phone, it fucks with his ability to make appointments that could result in further tightening of the leash they've got on his neck
I'm for these devices existing, but this is some real fucking bullshit.
Bring back technical fucking competence to technology.

2026-02-18 02:33:35 UTC

A kid on the bus was showing me texts from his mom on his phone today, and I noticed that he has her contact name as "Spawn Point".
That kid is going places.

2026-01-31 17:55:20 UTC

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Yah, say HOT METAL!

2026-01-17 19:09:08 UTC

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One of em is in here. It's very smol and very cute and not very useful.
edit: like, it can't even hold still without I clamp it in something, it should've come with a weighted base to click into. It's a thick credit card with a scope on it. One of those electronics hobbyist sites convinced me this would do the job until I become a Serious electronics guy.
I have eyed older scopes more than once, but I have read they require a lot of calibration and then there's capacitors to think about with gear that old... didn't seem like a good bet, at any discount level.

2026-01-17 09:36:45 UTC

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Dear Future: when generative AI has sorted out its environment and ethical issues, please retcon this toot with a meme about scraping up what little you have and buying the cheapest "legit" oscilloscope you can find and thinking you're ready for the next oscilloscope challenge, and then finding that basically every use you want to do requires a two-channel scope. Make it very poignant. Thank you, year 4000.

2026-01-13 19:10:49 UTC

It is nobody's business, not yours, not mine, not Linus's, not even fucking RMS, to decide for you what you can and cannot do with your hardware. I don't care how much more you know than me, if I want Middle Click to do a Paste, that's my own fucking business.
It is of no surprise to me that Gnome, the DE that will only allow you use a tiny set of specific colours as your desktop background, is the project pushing for this absolutely ridiculous vandalism.
What a bunch of fuckheads.

2026-01-06 20:48:00 UTC

So are there any fun, casual, Free (as in Free Software, not gratis with spyware and shit) games that you can play with friends, either online or with bluetooth controllers? Like Mario Cart or Trivia challenges or even MMORPGs with modest graphics requirements and rich storytelling?

2025-12-30 17:28:36 UTC

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You use what is right for the application.
Servers with GUIs are just weird to me. If the thing just needs to interact with data or a web interface, running a bunch of resource-eating desktop overhead is absurd, unless you have lived under GUI limitations your whole life, I suppose, but even Windows Server people eventually have to learn Powershell.
I am privileged in this take; I started out on Commodore machines and occasional spurts of access to the local university's mainframe (so Adventure and the like); command line is my default. I feel for those who are still struggling to integrate command line work into their head, but it's worth it, folks.
But the machine I myself use throughout the day runs KDE, the overhead is well worth it to facilitate getting your own mental work done. All the work I do on those servers and Pis and whatnot happens in a Konsole terminal on that GUI pc. *You* are worth the overhead; serving a website is not.

2025-12-27 09:20:41 UTC

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Is Vegas taking bets on the Pop Day, I wonder, or is *all* the gambling happening on Wall St among the shortsellers of breath...

2025-12-24 09:42:24 UTC

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I remember when Windows first tried to make me stop using the root directory of the drive and herd me into their stupid user folders
I remember when we were free

2025-12-21 14:51:21 UTC

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I had no idea rednecks could be pretentious.

2025-12-21 14:45:03 UTC

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Any suggestions on a good non-US bourbon? It's not my main whiskey (Scotch) or even my second main whiskey (Irish), but I do like a bourbon now and then...

2025-12-18 20:35:13 UTC

Hey #Winnipeg #Manitoba and other wintry locales in Canada...
I was considering a set of heated gloves from #Costco when I'm in the city on Monday, cause my diabetic fingers cannot keep the circulation up fast enough. My snowblower has heated handles, but even with that,
my mitts... are the shits
I did not like the reviews I read on reddit about those gloves tho, and I see that heated gloves from the brands that are beloved on r/skiing (I figure, skiers are gonna know, right?) run quite a bit higher. Specifically, someone said that they warmed their palms, but not their fingertips, so that tells me that I'm gonna have a bad, and expensive, time with those.
I don't really care about whether they're battery-heated in the final analysis, I just need my hands to stay warm for more than five minutes outside so I can do the necessaries of life here. I used to just kozak it out, but I am now weak and old I guess. My widdle fingas need pwotection fwom de nawth winds
Given a *top* budget of $120, the cost of those Costco gloves (this is all going on the credit because I can't do life without *something* that works), can anyone recommend a set from local stores that will solve my tootsie problem?
Mitts are also acceptable, stipulating that the damn things work, and I think mitts just do better at warming fingers, but *if* there are gloves that work for bad hands like mine within that price range, I like to have finger-type action on my waldoes.
...Costco does sell heated mittens, I think, and they were about half the price, so might give those a go.

2025-12-08 13:18:43 UTC

Hey #KDE
KDE is one of the most configurable DEs I've encountered - is there a way to prevent popups from *ever* popping up in front of Konsole? Other apps I might not care about, and I don't want to use Keep Above Others because they I would need to minimize it rather than Alt-Tab between it and the browser.
Cause I was typing away and a popup came and went in a flash of my frenetically typing fingers and I am entirely irked about the matter.

2025-11-29 17:54:38 UTC

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and like @npub1fdr…lvhs said and got quoted yesterday by me, most "impossible" things are just fights you'd rather not have.

2025-10-12 21:30:48 UTC

It has been true for as long as there have been alternatives to Windows for x86 hardware, that Microsoft's latest OS release has obscene requirements.
When they released NT, the suggested system in terms of RAM and CPU was obscenely high relative to a Win95 machine, and this pattern has always held, with the numbers changing but the relative scale of their hardware demands has always been pretty obnoxious. Win95 was obscene compared to DOS/3.11 too.
In spite of this, I stayed on Windoze because I liked games, and when I did finally switch, because of who I am I couldn't risk dual booting, so I just had to decide to not play games.
Today, someone switching need not be concerned about that, thanks to Valve. Their emulation game is strong - I do not know the comparisons, I'm sure Windows is still better at it, but that's not a given by any stretch, these days.
Now here is my prognostication: Because AI is ever-greedier for CPU cycles, part of Microsoft's Win11 plan is to distribute their AI farm to your machines. Perhaps they will only ever use your GPU for stuff that you use it for, but more likely they're gonna use you for their purposes, just like they use the data of our lives.
Either way though, their OS is going to be *more* greedy about resources than ever, and it will affect gaming performance. Unless they are smart enough to completely leave the processors alone when a game is loaded, but I don't think they will be, there will be surveillance and such they have to run all the time.
The upshot will be that Linux, which runs lean at all times, will at some point in the next year or two, *become the technically superior platform* for games. Gamers pay attention, and they will abandon Microsoft almost overnight, once it tips.
Games have always been the weakness that nobody really saw, and it required a giant company with resources to fix that. Thanks Valve.
Bookmark this and come jeer at me in a couple years if it hasn't happened, I'm fine.

2025-09-18 17:49:40 UTC

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I've never liked him much based on nothing but vibes more or less, and while I do have a couple of other "vibe" reactions that turned out to be true, I also failed to vibe on some truly heinous individuals.
But most notably seeing a picture of Gary Glitter sometime in the early 80s and being physically repulsed to the point that I (potentially a victim at the time) would have fled if I'd seen him anywhere in the real world. I still hatewatch his old TOTP appearances. Don't be like me.
That's not Kimmel mind you, he just gives me "rat pack wannabe" type stuff which is probably not remotely at Gary Glitter level.
Anyways it's annoying that I more or less have to defend him if anyone brings him up this week...

2025-09-05 22:24:21 UTC

Hey #Airbrush people of the fedi, who own one of those fancy quiet compressors
I have a compressor (and a bunch of airbrushes but that's another story) that my dead uncle gimme, and I was attempting to abuse an airbrush as compressed air to blow out an eavestrough, but I could not, because I noticed the thing's oil bulb is empty. I hope I didn't kill it already.
Anyways, I can sort out the process of adding it myself, but exactly what sort of oil would I want to use here? Would 3-in-1 be fine, or is that the words of a man who demands a Big Mac while sitting in a fine steakhouse?

2025-08-24 16:03:13 UTC

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I think White North Americans have been softened by a lack of participation in the wars that basically every other country in the world are directly affected by. We are a rich nation, but our wealth is exploited by private interests that don't pay enough taxes to reflect that in our national services, military and otherwise.
I think we have to start living in the same world as the rest of the world, and that includes participating in security actions.
But fucked if he's gonna do it on the backs of our working poor. Which includes me. The talk of army stuff is just another excuse for the coming "austerity measures" while the billionaries continue to dine out on our taxes.

2025-08-20 15:54:21 UTC

Hey #MPD #RaspberryPi
I am using a combination of MPD and snapcast round the place right now, but others in the house are not quite ready to let go of their streaming addiction lol
But we cannot stomach giving money to Joe Rogan, so we are trying out #Tidal today. What I'm wondering is, what's the most pain-free way to cast Tidal from her desktop to a Raspberry Pi that's across the room and connected to the good speakers?
I have a number of DLNA renderers on the network as well, and for some reason the desktop Tidal client cannot see any of them, or simply installing a renderer on that Pi would be the solution. But perhaps there's an alternative desktop client for Tidal or something? I don't have time today for a protracted lesson in Tidal's interface and unncessary weird language ad stuff.

2025-08-12 15:30:26 UTC

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Indeed. I go so far as to [indicate] the correction with brackets, and if it's a post-facto thought, I put it at the bottom with "edit: " as the prefix.
Normalize reconsidering what you said for truth, eloquence and appropriateness, and coming back to fix your mistakes as best you can.

2025-08-08 18:31:37 UTC

Alt text later out at the thrift
Edit: was gonna make this a pop quiz about what this is meant to hold, but the alt will give that away.
https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/994/570/250/282/307/original/1b89070c1db721ff.jpg

2025-07-19 19:44:27 UTC

I need help finding this product.
Laurie is from Kenora, which was a mill town when she grew up. The mill has long since been liquidated by private equity, so it's strictly a tourist town for rich Americans now, but her ex, her dad and many friends were all mill workers.
And all these millworkers used this stuff (see photo), apparently called "Carystrap," which is this weird sort of waxy best-of-both-worlds tape/string combination. She has a roll because the stuff was just always kicking around, where she came from, and as I said, it's extremely handy stuff - you can tear off an individual string or any number at a time, so as to get whatever strength you need, and whatever it's coated or mixed with makes it tie up real easy.
We've tried to find somewhere to order a fresh roll or three, but the internet doesn't seem to know this stuff exists. Any ideas, Fedi?
https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/881/610/586/614/486/original/f6bfbe32f85ff9c0.jpg

2025-06-26 14:55:44 UTC

Ok so I'm gonna have another go at #Falafel - I am better-armed with information about technique than the last time I tried it, in which the falafel balls just evaporated into bottom sludge in the grease, like cotton candy dropped in water.
My sticking point at the moment is fresh parsley - we don't have any, nor any fresh cilantro/coriander, so I don't know whether to substitute dried, or just omit, as one Reddit commenter on a post I read suggested.
I also found one suggestion to use a lesser amount of celery top leaves, which are similar to parsley but more bitter.
I attempted to google a recipe without any fresh herbs - I have to think, in the middle east where this food comes from, people *must* be making themselves delicious falafels every day, even when they don't have access to fresh herbs.
I have also noticed that most restaurant falafel I've had is *not* dayglo green inside, so it seems to me that these fresh herbs must be be optional on some level - I just can't find any trace of what you do instead, on this modern internet.
Any #cooking people, especially from the #MiddleEast have any opinions/info on this?
I'm just about to put the chickpeas on to soak, so I will be collecting opinions for the next 24 hours.
And speaking of that, anyone got a good Pita Bread recipe?

2025-06-17 21:55:51 UTC

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Ay yi. And I guess they didn't keep older versions on Bookwo- oh wait, you're still on Buster. Ayyyyy Yi. You got behind the 8 ball on this one lol
I have, not so much experience of Ceph, but I kinda jumped ship from the IT department to a dev-focused role right before they brought in Ceph to replace a thing I had in place using ZFS Send and DFS trickery, and which worked fine, it was strictly a matter of replicating one overloaded server (very easy with ZFS) to a second, and then pointing all the render farm machines at that one.
Anyways, ceph was brought in to replace it via an expensive vendor who did not send actual technical people to talk to us, I had one meeting with someone who was Sales through and through. So when the opportunity presented itself, I fled.
And sure enough, the new ceph system started introducing corrupted files to our mix at some point in the next year. I do not envy your task, but godspeed, good Sysadmin, godspeed.

2025-06-17 12:20:38 UTC

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Seems like it's worth the effort to build the current (stable) version of Ceph yourself, rather than rely on Debian's capricious release cycle?
Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid Debian fan, but it seems to me that part of being a Debian user is accepting that you're gonna have to learn git and so forth, and build some things yourself to be properly functional. :>

2025-06-13 21:37:58 UTC

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I've said before, you can vote your way into fascism, but you cannot vote your way back out.
The implications are numerous, but among them: the Democratic party is not going to be particularly useful to those who do the actual fixing, over the next while.
The excommunication of David Hogg indicates to me that they are determined to prevent anyone from fixing the party without a major action; they may be the only game available, but they are another one of the problems currently faced.
Again though, this is not an anti vote toot, cause anytime someone criticizes the millionaire party that seems to be the conclusion jumped to. But the voting isn't gonna move the needle anymore.
@npub1379…hcyl @npub1d5d…sm0d @npub1fdr…lvhs

2025-06-13 19:15:13 UTC

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Cory didn't say anything about how one should vote. He said some accurate things about the actions and character the current Democratic party.
@npub1d5d…sm0d @npub1fdr…lvhs @npub1xw7…r9m5

2025-06-09 21:35:58 UTC

Who owns GEOS nowadays anyway?

2025-06-09 14:38:45 UTC

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I don't see how you avoid that, not that I'm especially enamored of the current system either, but I know that there are people who are very concerned with electing their local rep. If the seats are distributed according to percentages rather than winning your riding, you cannot have always-local reps.
I'm not fundamentally in love FPTP, to be clear, but the belief that it will fundamentally change our country's politics is wishful, at best.
When I run the scenario in my head, I see a return of the Reform Party, with enough support that every supposedly-normal Conservative government will have to caucus with them to form that government, leading to pounds of flesh paid to the Christian Fascists all over again. You can't tool the ballot system to make people stop being fascists.
I suppose many of the left-leaning proponents believe that we will never have a right wing government again under PR, cause that's the only prize that I can see being worth risking a complete overhaul of our electoral system *during a moment of fascist insurgency*. It's a big canvas on which everyone paints their dreams. And which the "long ballot" scumbags are using to actively subvert the current system, as though bringing more chaos, which fascism feeds off, was ever the right move.

2025-06-08 18:20:12 UTC

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> FPtP can elect an extremist majority gov like in the US but > [> #> ProportionalRepresentation](https://growers.social/tags/ProportionalRepresentation )> cannot.
Israel would like a word.

2025-06-06 15:52:28 UTC

So, time for another round of #GetFediHired
I am a very experienced Unix/Linux admin who can dip into Windows stuff as necessary; the whole point of Microsoft's stuff is that a semi-educated numpty can handle it.
Sorry not sorry, their stuff sucks and costs too much, but a lot of employers use it and I can work with it, it makes my job a ton easier, and the overall work experience very bad, but that's the money person's prerogative.
I can handle Powershell, Bash and Python scripts, and have spent several years as a Python dev, so I understand their lifestyles and tools (git, kanban software, etc) as well.
My instinctive focus is on doing things as cheaply as possible, and avoiding expensive vendors as a solution, when generally 10-100 lines of any of the aforementioned scripting languages will get the same problem handled. I believe that the day is coming when technology jobs will look more like that as a default, because the infinite growth brainworm has already failed us. In my case, multiple times.
I also once held a CCNA, long since lapsed of course, but the logistics of network switching and routing doesn't really change very much. So my ideal role is a jack-of-all-techs handling most or all tasks for a small-to-medium size company, though ideally, with a redundant staffer - I have no interest in being some sort of irreplaceable person, and I would be actively training people.
It is looking more and more like a return to city life is going to be inevitable, because I just don't see the type of tech economy that got me the fully remote jobs that evaporated before our eyes coming back soon enough that we can maintain our current life in the country.
That said, Winnipeg is not the only city we could move to. Montreal is a pretty good musical town, for instance...
Anyways, if you need a technology fixer for your company who will equip you with good working systems that are secure and reliable and based on rational budgets, hit me up for a resume.
I am really enjoying what I'm doing at this point, but the odds of finding another solid 20 hour job locally are not that high.

2025-06-05 11:48:46 UTC

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This you?
https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/630/593/746/617/424/original/8ac98e1eae0ebd7d.png

2025-06-05 11:38:52 UTC

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With the post down, and the rest of his content seemingly in German, not sure how useful this post in English is at this point.

2025-06-01 12:05:02 UTC

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It's acceptable to post the link I suppose, but you should verify first that one can read it without an account, which one cannot, so this becomes pointless, because asking people to create an account there is a bit much.
@npub1me9…z28v @npub1ny7…uv57

2025-05-28 17:24:54 UTC

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Then let me tell you another story: I had four 8TB disks and made two mirrors like you just said. Some time later, after a lot of pain moving the data around to the old server's ever-shrinking raidz1 array, those are now a 4-disk z1.
You always run out of space, my friend, always. 🤣

2025-05-28 16:07:56 UTC

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I would probably do a mirror for the moment. Since you're talking about growing to four, that means when you get the other two, you can setup the raidz as described, copy the data over, then destroy the mirror and add those disks (or even pull and add them one at a time).
I don't actually know whether there's a performance difference between a two-disk raidz1 and a mirror, if there isn't then maybe just go with the z. I also wonder if a raidz1 would work with only the parity disk available.
But again, I don't know the deep magic well enough to say any of this for sure, it's more of a "play it safe" than anything...

2025-05-28 15:58:20 UTC

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I'm basically continuing to try to learn this thing, on the assumption that once I understand it, there will be reliable and reproducible ways to do whatever I need to, no matter how weird. Cause music apps get real weird, for whatever reason...

2025-05-28 15:35:51 UTC

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Just getting back to this, but to be sure I understand correctly:
I have changed my main 'nixos' channel to 25.05, but I also have the 'unstable' channel available via the usual way (I haven't switched to using flakes yet, it's on the agenda but I have thus far gotten weird errors and failed to understand them).
So it follows, I suppose, that I could also add the old 24.11 channel alongside the other two, set it up as an alternate the same as unstable, and then install OSC from that channel?
Will this work in perpetuity? Cause I also lost an obscure library when I switched that one of my VST apps relies on.

2025-05-26 12:32:05 UTC

https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/574/138/745/782/411/original/1b625e319aee29d7.jpg

2025-05-25 11:44:14 UTC

Hey #NixOS
I get that using packages from unstable is a dice roll, and I fully accept that those packages will sometimes be broken, but what is the deal with allowing broken packages into the mainstream stable channel?
I just switched to 25.05 and now open-stage-control won't update.
Why not have the most recent non-broken version in the stable channel?
This is incredibly not-smooth and not-easy to deal with, I have to comment out the package and then remember to add it back in later. This is absolute doom for an ADHD like me. I've already reverted my servers back to Debian, and I'm strongly considering the same for my laptop, because this is unreliable, I use OSC for live performances, I cannot have the package break randomly and then need to be removed while it gets fixed if I want to update anything at all.

2025-05-13 21:35:23 UTC

I had no idea how appreciated we school bus drivers are in the community. Two neighbour ladies were out walking, and stopped by (I was working on yard stuff) to say that I'm earning my way to heaven.
I don't think I'm doing anything that difficult, anyone who finds what I do hard, I mean, what kind of monster are you anyways, they're kids.
You could be working alongside nazi truckers. True story.

2025-05-08 18:36:00 UTC

Has anyone ordered one of these rechargeable 12v battery packs off of Aliexpress? I have a couple of Hifiberry-Amp cards which can accept 12v to power the whole shebang, and we need some outdoor music for the summer; this seems most expedient.
They all claim 5A continuous available current, which ought to be plenty for a Raspberry Pi music player, I'd think. Less certain about, can you leave it plugged in and in use, and have it function like a UPS?
"Marktita" is quite cute.
https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/473/647/618/634/562/original/984dab83fd2f2043.png

2025-05-08 12:26:19 UTC

All these Free Software projects that need more labour support should start having training sessions for capable people who want to help, have the necessary aptitude but not the specific skills, yet.
For instance, I decided to leave Debian on my servers rather than to go #NixOS because two projects in a row that I wanted to deploy failed to install because the packages were broken.
I was told on here that it was probably an easy fix, but I am not even clear how to work on them, even though I could probably figure it out.
If yall ever decide to take willing newbs in hand for a bit of mentoring from veteran coders or maintainers, I could definitely help maintain packages, after having some of that help sorting it all out and loading it into my brain.

2025-05-04 13:03:04 UTC

People are being shipped to South American prisons with no hope of return, but sure, go off about the AI pope suit.

2025-05-01 11:34:30 UTC

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It's All Hands On Deck this summer or yall are over. Big march not good enough.
Big Wildcat Strike, everyone shows up. Three days later you've got a country again.

2025-04-30 12:24:29 UTC

First, my opinion about the instance that existed before: I hate "FOSS" the acronym. It places Free Software, the original and useful idea, on the same level as Open Source, the corporate bullshit that they made up to justify using Free software and attempt to steal its mojo while keeping the hoarder mentality intact.
Not that I never use it, this is a newer opinion that I'm still working on integrating into my rhetoric.
I'm not here to defend the now-threatened instance, whatever the case. But I will say, this one *does* look like a pointless witchhunt to me.
Nobody can point to a single moderation decision made *on fosstodon* that is of concern, by this fellow or anyone else.
That should have been the end of the story, IMO.
But that's not even the story I'm here to tell today. I'm here to fix the Internet.
The Gist: #Fosstodon has 60k-70k users, and that is too many for a Fediverse Internet Server.
For the Fediverse Internet to work, all servers need to be operated on a human scale. 60k users, with 9k daily active, clearly a few humans are were operating it, but it turns out they are quitting because they are burnt out from all that work, real friggin work, on something that probably started as a lark on some level.
The witchfinder generals believed they were delivering retribution here, taking something away from the accused, but look how quickly and without regret the witch acceded; he was getting just about nothing from being a mod there, is my conclusion. And same goes, it turns out, for the operators of the site.
The takeaway here has nothing to do with social justice, and everything to do with the fact that *some* of the #Fediverse is being operated at scales similar to the silos, with the main instance being presumably still the worst example - this is not sustainable, and the admins of a sufficiently large instance will pull the plug on many, many users if they get burnt out from not having the rather extraordinary levels of support they need.
There is an ongoing tension these days about open registration and large instances, that many have not yet noticed, maybe, but the conflict is coming. We all agree on one thing: The Fedi is not in its final form. The death of Fosstodon, I argue, is a bit of Darwinian evolution happening before our eyes.
Getting rid of this "go big and go bigger" mindset, which is leftover from the fact that this protocol is serving as the conduit for imitations of the large sites that were built by Capital, is a big part of reaching the sustainable, robust form that we need.
Gotta go pick up the kids, to be continued...

2025-04-29 18:12:30 UTC

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Also the many new datacentres
If it is not burning a whole bunch more power, how are they pulling that off while setting up whole new datacentres? Are they magical fairypower datacentres?
You might be mistaking me for a simple poopoohead, but I don't trust math that tells me to ignore new power plants, and new server plants, being built in the name of this supposedly environmentally neutral tech.
My actual opposition to it is rooted in a far deeper place: Leftism, where I cannot buy into the idea that capitalists obeying their infinite growth brainworm is ever a good thing, *especially* when they're essentially promising that if we just put *enough* monkeys on enough typewriters we'll cure cancer and solve fusion, based on inputs that are replete with tumors and U235.
Machine Learning is useful, yes, in cases where it runs on local hardware with highly focused, highly trained models that do stuff like spot rare mushrooms in the forest and nothing else, yes, that sort of thing is highly useful.
Server rooms and extra nuclear waste so that people can make action figures of themselves and have glasses that lie to them about the world, it's just bad from top to bottom, and a single drop of water is not acceptable. Minimize, rationalize, enjoy yaself buddy.

2025-04-29 17:56:06 UTC

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Why all the nuclear power plants and revived coal then
for action figure pictures

2025-04-20 10:47:39 UTC

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Can relate. It has been a long, long time since I read the books, but, Marvin's encounter with a tank is the scene that will never leave my head.
I like Rickman, but his Marvin was not as good as the original BBC show. I do not remember if the same actor played him on the actual original radio play but afaic they nailed his portrayal on the BBC show.
@npub1ahj…kakq @npub1ny7…uv57

2025-04-03 18:10:27 UTC

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So this is kinda like using aptitude instead of apt-get on a Debian distro? It still connects to the real nix repos, with their godlike rolling schedules and whatnot?
I'm what you might call a conservative about this sort of thing - I'm not against these side versions, but as long as the majority of the community is using regular nix, the most likely scenario is that I'm gonna stay there as well, strictly because it is easier to find help and guidance from the largest user community.
As long as they are not giving up essential things for their mainstream choice, of course, and it seems to me that nix decides what's mainstream.
I remain a highly enthusiastic #NixOS user but I know I am not the first to complain about their atrocious documentation practices. I am still working on fully understanding the beast, but once I do I expect I'll try to help out with that, as my main contribution.
Main thing is nixos.wiki has to fucking go. It's just fucking embarrassing.

2025-04-03 17:51:23 UTC

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Lix?
https://assets.growers.social/media_attachments/files/114/275/295/075/958/347/original/c8d9f219a8c1a79c.mp4

2025-04-03 16:47:29 UTC

Oh how I do love the docs at #NixOS.
I am attempting to do the "System wide vim/nvim configuration" example at https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Vim and rebuild is giving me this error:
> error: attempt to call something which is not a function but a set
I read on one forum that removing the { } you see there, the set in question, from the override line, that would fix it, but then I of course get
> error: expected a set but found a function
Since this is coming straight from the wiki and my syntax is correct, this is what you might call
> Annoying

2025-03-29 16:15:43 UTC

Hey #Canada
I've been using Ivory soap and deodorant for years, and they are USA. I have reverted to my old preference of my teens, Irish Spring, which is not made in Ireland but here in Canada. Cue the young lasses passing by my outdoor shower saying "And we like it too!"
But what about pit stick? Ivory pit stick is that white powdery type stuff, and I like unscented, but is there a Canadian pit stick like that made in Canada?