Peter Bhat Harkins

Programmer by day, programmer by night.

Blog: https://push.cx Bootstrapping: https://recheck.dev

I run https://lobste.rs and stream office hours Mon+Thu: https://push.cx/stream

It's better to follow https://bsky.app/profile/push.cx - the bugs have pushed me away from reading Mastodon much.

Public Key

npub12nzu70elj8k5jqc46cgdd9q7qd40xzky2rvtwglm6sx3kd7cu8vsk2u94e

NIP-05 Address

pushcx@ruby-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9f3w08ulerm2fqv2avyxkjs0qx6hnptz9pk9hy0aagrgmxlvwrkgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsfq92jm

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub12nzu70elj8k5jqc46cgdd9q7qd40xzky2rvtwglm6sx3kd7cu8vsk2u94e

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Last Notes

2026-08-28 12:44:54 UTC

As Anthropic's quota promotion ends I need to make one point very clear to the critics who say "this is all a bubble, demand is subsidized by VC funding": it's not a "bait and switch" if you can buy the bait, it's "dumping". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

2026-07-28 14:45:39 UTC

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I called this 5 years ago (https://lobste.rs/c/jgro9y) and have a simpler way to say it:
There are improvement rates like Moore's Law and its siblings for disk size, bandwidth, etc. Because Lobsters grows less than those rates it has effectively infinite runway to scale, and it gets cheaper to run over time.

2026-07-28 14:45:03 UTC

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On Sunday I improved the story page caches to refill in the background and be durable across deploys, so during yesterday's Monday morning peak traffic, the app ticked along averaging 4 rps. Most of those do not write to the db.
SQLite is way more than performant enough for our needs.

2026-07-28 14:41:42 UTC

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I called this 5 years ago (https://lobste.rs/c/jgro9y) and have a better way to say it:
There are improvement rates like Moore's Law and its siblings for disk size, bandwidth, etc. Because Lobsters grows less than those rates it has effectively infinite runway to scale, and it gets cheaper to run over time.

2026-07-28 14:41:19 UTC

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On Sunday I improved the story page caches to refill in the background and be durable across deploys, so during yesterday's Monday morning peak traffic, Rails ticked along averaging 4 rps. Most of those do not write to the db.
SQLite is way more than performant enough for our needs.

2026-07-28 14:41:09 UTC

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89.6% of site hits (page cache, avatars, js, css) are handled by Caddy. 89.2% of hits that go on to our code in app workers are visitors.
So authed users are 10.8% of app hits, 1.1% of overall hits.
(Avatars and comment redirects could shift to Caddy but perf is great now so it's time to stop.)

2026-07-28 14:40:55 UTC

Due to personal commitments, the next Lobsters office hours won't be until August 18. So let me share some fun stats from the recent perf work!
Lobsters sees ~250k human visitors per day. This is a rough estimation, we'd need client-side telemetry to improve but precision wouldn't change anything.

2026-07-24 12:10:28 UTC

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@nprofile…r9vg We had some other hangup that wanted to see a valid SPF record, I hadn't known to pay extra to reserve an IP for the VPS, and I wasn't sure how many VPSs there would be.

2026-07-24 11:48:54 UTC

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This is resolved, the SPF record was valid but overbroad, 'all' instead of just the one VPS IP. Thanks to @nprofile…r9vg and @nprofile…8ue8 for pointing me to review it.

2026-07-23 21:47:21 UTC

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@nprofile…8ue8 Thanks for this, I reviewed the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records we've had for a while. SPF was valid but overbroad;I tightened it to only the server's IP, fingers crossed.

2026-07-23 16:39:42 UTC

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@nprofile…r9vg Nothing about it in their SMTP server's response, and I haven't touched DNS in months.

2026-07-23 16:02:45 UTC

Lobsters heads up: a few days ago GMail started bouncing 20-50% of our mail: "The IP you're using to send mail is not authorized to send email directly to our servers."
They have no support channels for suspected spammers so uh, good luck with your customer support inquiries.

2026-07-23 14:04:24 UTC

I had wanted to stream Lobsters office hours today after all the database excitement (https://lobste.rs/c/cyhnzl), but my neighbor apparently wants to operate a lumber mill and it is _very_ audible on mic. Maybe this afternoon or tomorrow AM.

2026-07-16 14:08:36 UTC

Getting the post-sqlite-migration Lobsters office hours stream started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2026-07-16 13:38:40 UTC

After our biggest code lift, Lobsters has migrated from MariaDB to SQLite in prod. The primary dev wrote up a great post about it: https://lobste.rs/s/ko1ji1/ I'll stream office hours in 25 minutes, happy to answer your questions and run your queries, or hang out as I do some follow-up work. Stream info: https://push.cx/stream

2026-07-09 15:02:49 UTC

After an unplanned summer vacation (plus an hour of inglorious battle with fc-cache), I'm getting the Lobsters office hours stream started: https://twitch.tv/pushcx. FAQ & archive at https://push.cx/stream but drop in with questions or just to see what development looks like.

2026-05-28 14:06:50 UTC

I'm getting the Lobsters office hours stream started at https://twitch.tv/pushcx - plenty of PRs and, if there's time, I'll work on increasing the visibility of modmail. Drop in anytime with questions. Archive and faq at https://push.cx/stream

2026-05-14 14:05:37 UTC

I'm getting the Lobsters office hours stream started at https://twitch.tv/pushcx - no specific topic planned, so it's a great day to drop in with questions. FAQ + archive at https://push.cx/stream

2026-05-07 14:16:05 UTC

I'm getting the Lobsters office hours stream started at https://twitch.tv/pushcx to catch up on unreviewed issues. Might fix bugs, will certainly add more. Drop in to chat about anything related to the site. https://push.cx/stream for background

2026-04-30 14:08:58 UTC

Getting Lobsters office hours started now at https://twitch.tv/pushcx (info + archive https://push.cx/stream). Plenty of PRs and issues; trying to make more progress on SQLite perf.

2026-04-24 12:53:38 UTC

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@nprofile…r6yu It very much is my ridiculous jam, thank you.

2026-04-21 19:08:45 UTC

I'm getting Lobsters office hours started at https://twitch.tv/pushcx - drop in to chat about the site or just see what maintenance looks like. I think I spotted a significant caching bug, so I'll start the stream there. More info: https://push.cx/stream

2026-04-16 14:25:57 UTC

I haven't streamed Lobsters office hours the last month because of travel + guests, but it's time to pick it back up. https://twitch.tv/pushcx is the live stream and https://push.cx/stream is the FAQ and archive.

2026-03-09 19:13:47 UTC

I'm a little under the weather and I have to skip Lobsters office hours, hope to see y'all on Thursday morning.

2026-03-05 15:16:13 UTC

Let's start Lobsters office hours: https://twitch.tv/pushcx (bg: https://push.cx/stream). Monday's stream was cut short by tech issues, so there's plenty to do in addition to the usual open question time.

2026-03-02 21:27:16 UTC

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My internet connection went from flaky to kaput, sorry. I think that's it for today's stream.

2026-03-02 20:13:23 UTC

Getting the Lobsters office hours stream started: https://twitch.tv/pushcx (bg https://push.cx/stream). Bunch of frontend fixes are in flight, plenty of time open for questions. Drop in anytime in the next ~3 hours.

2026-02-26 15:35:05 UTC

Bit late, but I'm getting the Thursday Lobsters office hours stream started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx There's a plausible answer to the perf problems with last weekend's sqlite migration attempt and some smaller bugs that shook out of it. More info: https://push.cx/stream

2026-02-19 15:19:44 UTC

Getting the Lobsters office hours stream going: https://twitch.tv/pushcx It's a time to chat about community issues, or just see what maintenance looks like. I plan to test the sqlite migration to perhaps run this weekend. More info and archive: https://push.cx/stream

2026-02-16 20:17:12 UTC

Getting the Lobsters office hours stream started: https://twitch.tv/pushcx It's going to be a shorter one, depending on chat, but I hope to improve some error messages with ban warnings and get the sqlite migration ready to merge this weekend. bg: https://push.cx/stream

2026-02-12 16:03:38 UTC

Getting the Lobsters office hours stream started late (thanks cat). There's sqlite work, but also hopefully shipping Anubis to handle the bots that have repeatedly swamped the site the last few weeks. Stream: https://twitch.tv/pushcx - archive + faq at: https://push.cx/stream

2026-02-09 20:10:06 UTC

I'm getting the Lobsters office hours stream started: https://twitch.tv/pushcx (archive: https://push.cx). Catching up on PRs and issues in a shorter one, if my desktop would like to not crash today. (Which it's now doing on 30% of days, no fun.)

2026-02-02 20:32:45 UTC

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Welp, desktop just crashed during stream. This is not my day, in a bunch of big and small ways, so I'm going to stay off stream, work through the PRs and issues, and try to take it easy. Sorry, see y'all on Thursday.

2026-02-02 20:16:17 UTC

Getting Lobsters office hours started now, https://twitch.tv/pushcx (archive at https://push.cx/stream). I'm starting late and it'll be shorter because of losing a bunch of time to DNS today, so drop in early with questions.

2026-02-02 19:56:34 UTC

Just recognized and fixed some DNS issues with my personal domain that has sent a lot of my email to spam folders the last couple (??) months. If you were expecting an email from me on something, please check your spam or email me again.

2026-01-29 15:10:08 UTC

Getting the usual Thursday Lobsters office hours stream started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx Drop in to chat about the site or just see how thrilling maintenance is. More info and archive at https://push.cx/stream

2026-01-26 20:05:32 UTC

I'll start the Monday afternoon Lobsters office hours stream in about 5 minutes, just hit the button on https://twitch.tv - There's the logiclang tag and a plan for frontend linting, plus more maintenance. Drop in with questions anytime in the next 3 hours; archive: https://push.cx/stream

2026-01-24 17:07:39 UTC

Next example of zapping a one-off slog I have ignored for years: I've used newsboat (nee newsbeuter) a long time and have 408 feeds. Except 127 feeds broke over time and checking on each is a chore. I put Claude on the error log, told it to use curl to find live feeds, and it fixed 21 in 33 min.

2026-01-22 15:16:22 UTC

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OK, getting the stream rolling now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx Going to be a shorter one today for a dr's appt. Bring your Lobsters questions. :)

2026-01-22 14:29:54 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters office hours in about a half-hour, got some small PRs and the big database_consistency one to merge. I tinkered with the transcripts to handle multiple speakers and retranscribed them with a better model: https://push.cx/stream

2026-01-19 19:06:01 UTC

OK, second try, I'll resume Lobsters Office Hours in about an hour. Internet connection seems to be very well-behaved even though it's 3F, so drop in with questions. https://push.cx/stream I've got plenty of PRs and issues to catch up on, so it'll be a busy couple hours.

2026-01-12 18:56:00 UTC

After a couple weeks off for the holidays and personal commitments, I'll resume the usual schedule for Lobsters Office Hours. First stream back starts in about an hour. Plenty to do, with a new tag and PRs. Drop in with questions, I'll stream ~3h. https://push.cx/stream

2025-12-31 16:53:50 UTC

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Just... wow. I retyped this comment and it autocompleted issues from random other repos. Lobsters is a Rails app, none of these are from our repo.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/815/220/435/610/139/original/e19f8d950d01c3de.jpeg

2025-12-31 16:48:26 UTC

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@nprofile…hha7 Perfect, thank you!

2025-12-31 16:37:06 UTC

Here's a new one for core GitHub functionality becoming unreliable: I typed `#1843` to link a PR and the picker autocompleted 5 unrelated issues/PRs, mislabeling all of them as #1843. I need to prioritize exporting issues + PRs, I feel like I'm making a mistake by leaving that data at risk of loss.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/815/155/285/176/216/original/6dea0368638f8f6b.jpeg

2025-12-28 17:11:54 UTC

Has anyone seen something like a wall outlet with a USB port... AND the cable permanently attached? Asking for a household where everyone borrows charging cables to leave in the Phantom Zone, never to be seen again. I'm griping a little, but trying to help solve a real hassle.

2025-12-26 17:05:21 UTC

Prompted by my neighbors going out of town for the holiday and leaving their alarm clock on... iOS can play various white noises. Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio & Visual -> Background Sounds (worth adding to Control Center). I think it's intended for tinnitus, but also useful for light sleepers.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/786/954/837/016/886/original/0cdec06455183517.png

2025-12-22 20:06:30 UTC

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@nprofile…r0ja Getting started with the last Lobsters office hours for the year 🎄❄️, drop in with questions or just watch maintenance: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-12-22 19:25:00 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters Office Hours in about 40 minutes. I'm going to take a holiday break (happy holidays!) so the following stream will be Monday Jan 5. There's some PRs from @nprofile…r0ja to improve dev setup, plus some controller maintenance. Drop in anytime for the next couple hours.

2025-12-18 17:26:34 UTC

I love some of these urgent warnings I get nowadays. Great, remind me again in a year or two.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/741/739/747/226/956/original/8c8d425b19add478.png

2025-12-18 14:03:38 UTC

No Lobsters office hours stream this morning. I’ve been sick the last couple days. I’m pretty much fine now but would lose my voice.

2025-12-15 20:09:27 UTC

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OK, a minute late, but I'm starting the Lobsters office hours stream now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-12-15 19:14:48 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters office hours in 45 minutes, drop in anytime with questions about the site or just to see maintenance. Last week's performance fixes and bot blocking have held up, so my plan is transparency on the bot blocking + response on recent slop thread. Info: https://push.cx/stream

2025-12-12 16:20:38 UTC

I try to stay grateful for free things but I am losing my cool with how GitHub can no longer count to 10 comments without taking off its socks.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/707/506/653/600/998/original/cf1f8aec79b5dd94.png

2025-12-11 15:08:36 UTC

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Starting now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-12-11 14:22:02 UTC

I've been doing a lot of performance work on Lobsters for the recent slowdown, and today will be a similarly high-performance Office Hours stream... by being just an hour this morning. Bring your topics, or I can ramble about the bot that was >80% of hits for a week. https://push.cx/stream for info

2025-12-10 15:44:01 UTC

At 3:19 AM this morning I snapped away from a heart-pounding nightmare... that my blog had published all of my incomplete draft posts.

2025-12-08 20:12:10 UTC

Appropriately, I'm running a little slow getting started on Lobsters Office hours... and the site is running slow because of a dumb spambot that's been hammering it all weekend. I'll work on that and chat abotu the site, starting now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-12-08 17:21:01 UTC

Real irritating puzzle: is there no way with Rack to access the raw client headers? I'm debugging a problem and want to see the actual header sent. I care if the client sent "user-agent" vs "user_agent" vs "User-Agent", but they all seem to be smashed to HTTP_USER_AGENT. Dude, where's my data?

2025-12-04 14:30:08 UTC

I'm not going free to stream Lobsters office hours today, something big came up. I expect to pick back up on Monday.

2025-12-01 20:06:48 UTC

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Getting Lobsters Office Hours started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-12-01 18:52:28 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters office hours in about an hour. There's some great frontend PRs to check out fixing comment lines and adding opengraph preview images, but most it's open door time where you can drop in to chat about the site. https://push.cx/stream

2025-12-01 17:40:27 UTC

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Made a connection to pass this on. Thanks, folks.

2025-12-01 17:00:38 UTC

Does anyone have a contact at Google that I could ping about one of their users having a stereotypical psychotic break with heavy encouragement from Gemini? Angels, alchemy, proof of magic, conspiracy, etc. Guy's emailed me a couple times and is getting worse.

2025-11-29 00:18:48 UTC

I know not to judge a book by it's cover, but I have started judging a book by its index comma lack thereof. A good index is real work, and I'm coming around to noticing a pattern that if the publisher didn't think the book was worth the effort, it's not very good.

2025-11-24 20:07:23 UTC

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Lobsters office hours stream starts now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-11-24 19:21:16 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters office hours in about 40 minutes. PRs are quiet, but luckily (?) I've got plenty of bugs to fix. Drop in to chat about the site or just see what maintenance looks like. More info: https://push.cx/stream

2025-11-21 16:58:59 UTC

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@nprofile…gcg0 fair

2025-11-21 16:08:22 UTC

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/18/nx-s1-5564064/calvin-and-hobbes-bill-watterson-40-years-comic-strip-lee-salem
You either die a Calvin or live long enough to see yourself become the Calvin's dad.

2025-11-20 15:04:25 UTC

Streaming Lobsters office hours now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx - I found a queue of unreported bugs, so there's plenty of maintenance to watch. But mostly it's time for open discussion, so drop in with any questions about the site. (more info: https://push.cx/stream)

2025-11-17 20:03:48 UTC

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https://twitch.tv/pushcx - headed live now

2025-11-17 18:57:13 UTC

Lobsters Office Hours streams in about an hour. I've got that username UI to finish up if you want to watch maintenance, but mostly it's open door time, you can drop in with questions anytime. More info and archive: https://push.cx/stream

2025-11-13 15:12:47 UTC

Lobsters office hours is starting now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx Little bit of a late start and I'll probably only run for 1.5h because I'm a bit swamped today, but drop in to chat about the site or see what maintenance looks like. Background and archive at https://push.cx/stream

2025-11-10 20:04:55 UTC

Forgot to pre-announce, but I'm starting the Lobsters Office Hours stream now, if you want to drop in with questions about the site: https://twitch.tv/pushcx (more info: https://push.cx/stream)

2025-11-07 14:04:22 UTC

As friends get hooked on and hollowed out by short-form video, a small thing that brings joy (probably only to me) is that you can make any youtube link look like a shorts link. So when they send things I'll never watch I can reply with similar links like https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sJNK4VKeoBM

2025-11-06 19:50:51 UTC

Incredibly good post on game design by Raph Koster: https://www.raphkoster.com/2025/11/03/game-design-is-simple-actually/ Probably takes a half-hour to read and a year to learn, which is much nicer than the couple decades it would take otherwise.

2025-11-06 15:00:09 UTC

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@nprofile…r0ja is hosting Lobsters office hours starting now! https://twitch.tv/chaelcodes

2025-11-06 14:13:01 UTC

We're shaking up the Lobsters Office Hours stream in about 50 minutes. I'll be hosted by https://twitch.tv/chaelcodes - she streams open source Rails development, and she volunteered to take on a modmail feature: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/1782 Should be fun, see you soon.

2025-11-06 01:45:02 UTC

The distinction between high and low culture is a scam created to sell less low culture.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/500/220/459/475/687/original/31ddcfd06b9ba405.jpg

2025-11-03 20:07:05 UTC

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Getting started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-11-03 19:36:50 UTC

Lobsters office hours will stream in about 30 minutes. I plan to catch up on PRs, improve the username change UI, and following last weekend's partial outage, maybe add Anubis ONLY FOR KNOWN BAD BOT ASINS (pls be chill). Plus a clever jujutsu revset for feature branches. Info: https://push.cx/stream

2025-10-30 15:41:25 UTC

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@nprofile…se6t for one thousand years

2025-10-30 14:02:02 UTC

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If you're looking for something to watch, I have high hopes for the talks from JJ con: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOU2XLYxmsILM5cRwAK6yKdtKnCK6Y4Oh

2025-10-30 14:00:23 UTC

The cat has canceled this morning's Lobsters office hours stream by jumping up and spilling my cup of coffee over basically everything on my desk, including a bunch of important paperwork. I'm going to be cleaning all morning and am not in a great mood to present. Perp attached. Will do PRs ~lunch.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/115/463/475/688/179/977/original/36a608bcd0a29f7e.jpeg

2025-10-27 19:23:00 UTC

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OK, getting started with some jujutsu, PRs, bugs: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-10-27 19:14:11 UTC

I'll start Lobsters office hours in a few minutes after a family phone call. On Saturday we finally got swamped by badly-behaved crawlers and Cadey helped with some info from Anubis, which I'd like to protect the site with today. Drop in anytime to talk about the site, https://push.cx/stream

2025-10-27 17:33:41 UTC

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I guess I was struck by the contrast of an infinite capacity to bicker about speed bumps versus unanimous "you must throw your body on the levers of the machine" ICE-delenda-est rhetoric while one guy had a mild breakdown about how people need to take pound cake home with them. The midwest of it.

2025-10-27 17:28:53 UTC

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@nprofile…avec Looks like you may have found a reasonably profitable bug to report, good luck. :)

2025-10-27 17:24:01 UTC

I dropped by a friend's block club and the homeowners had 3 topics:
1. Host said bring baked goods and people brought so much the table overflowed and the host freaked out that he'd be left with it.
2. Speed bumps, yes or no.
3. ICE is evil. All decent people must resist until it's disbanded.

2025-10-27 15:32:03 UTC

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@nprofile…avec Yes, thank you! That link gets me a 404, but the title let me find it in my history: https://flames-of-code.netlify.app/blog/my-jj-workflow/

2025-10-27 15:06:01 UTC

Anyone have the link for a recent post about jujutsu where the author described having stacked + independent feature branches with examples feature-1 and -2, then main, then an empty merge commit "------" rolling them up, then long-lived feature branches above it? I liked it and can't find it again.

2025-10-23 14:40:53 UTC

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OK, door's open to chat about Lobsters or just kibitz the maintenance: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-10-23 14:21:09 UTC

Whoops, I got distracted by writing a long comment about jujutsu and healthy online communities, so the Lobsters office hours stream starts a little late today. Here's that comment: https://lobste.rs/c/63u8je and I'll be ready to get the stream rolling in a few minutes: https://push.cx/stream

2025-10-21 21:37:22 UTC

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@nprofile…tfx7 I wasn't looking for the registrations.

2025-10-21 13:28:10 UTC

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@nprofile…zzfu I previously hit this error when I had privacy.resistFingerprinting enabled in Firefox. Twitch is very bad about false positive failures if you have any security or privacy options enabled. All their controls are oriented towards spam prevention at the expense of security, and they don't seem particularly good at spam prevention given the very obvious "best followers now" spam I get during most every stream.

2025-10-20 19:05:18 UTC

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Getting started now: https://twitch.tv/pushcx

2025-10-20 18:20:50 UTC

I'll stream Lobsters Office Hours in about 40 minutes. If I can fix a couple bugs quick enough (hat approval, username linking) I'll resume work on story merging UI, which recently had a small meta thread: https://lobste.rs/c/3ssni6 Drop in to chat or watch, https://push.cx/stream for more bg.

2025-10-20 17:16:51 UTC

Apropos of everything over in Ruby packaging, I asked to see the exclusive license for the Rails trademark mentioned in the first sentence of https://rubyonrails.org/trademarks. RF responded that it "isn't a public document" (which is why I asked) but I guess means they decline to make it public.

2025-10-20 16:36:14 UTC

A small data modeling tip: if you have a state machine with a state that's reachable from every other (eg "order cancelled", "staff override", "delayed"), you should probably have two state machines.

2025-10-17 15:29:31 UTC

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@nprofile…evsq It's his personal property: https://rubyonrails.org/trademarks
(Accidentally sent this from the Lobsters bot account a minute ago because mastodon is a mess, sorry for any confusion.)