Nostr notes by nemo

Puzzled Pint Bangalore is happening tomorrow night! We'll be ...

2025-08-11T08:47:36Z

Puzzled Pint Bangalore is happening tomorrow night!

We'll be at Secret Story Bar & Kitchen in Indiranagar from 6:30pm onwards.

You can register at https://www.district.in/events/puzzled-pint-bangalore-august-2025-buy-tickets

We've also updated the previous month's leaderboards. Last month has our highest turnout ever, with 155 players across 52 teams!

You can find the team standings, previous puzzles, etc here: https://blr.puzzledpint.com/

The Linux marketshare numbers for India seem very unreliable. 15% ...

2025-07-11T06:30:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…3a85
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The Linux marketshare numbers for India seem very unreliable. 15% of desktop users in India is unrealistically high (as someone who's been promoting Linux for 15 yrs).

As for Mastodon - there's no demand. I've been running my instance for friends, and the network effects haven't yet kicked in for even my friends to use it regularly. Mastodon.social* is good enough for most Indians - an Indian-service can be a curse, given India's IT intermediary laws.

Nopes, not showing up for me either. A plain-text version below ...

2025-07-10T17:31:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…3afj
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Nopes, not showing up for me either.

A plain-text version below the picture also works?

Request: Add alt text to images please. Makes the quizzing more ...

2025-07-10T07:31:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…ka0e
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Request: Add alt text to images please. Makes the quizzing more accessible and searchable as well.

TIL #Bangalore has a Shortwave Radio Museum. Entry on prior ...

2025-07-09T07:31:43Z

TIL #Bangalore has a Shortwave Radio Museum. Entry on prior appointment only, but open all 7 days.

> A collection of 180+ Tube /Valve Radios [1920 to 1977], Restored and working.

https://www.shortwaveradiomuseum.com/

https://thewire.in/economy/india-inequality-pib-fact-check > ...

2025-07-07T11:11:23Z

https://thewire.in/economy/india-inequality-pib-fact-check

> Whichever way one looks at the data, the picture is clear: India is a highly unequal country, and inequality is worsening.

As part of building Open Justice India ...

2025-07-01T11:58:31Z

As part of building Open Justice India (https://openjustice-in.github.io/), I've been talking to a lot of legaltech companies, and I finally found the first one that wasn't driven by AI, but rather "being helpful to its end-users - lawyers".

Haven't decided yet (I have a lot) but leaning towards ...

2025-06-22T18:27:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…02gr
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Haven't decided yet (I have a lot) but leaning towards exchanging them at Blossoms.

The sharp transflective display used in the play.date is ...

2025-06-16T16:18:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…qdqy
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The sharp transflective display used in the play.date is available at https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694

I skimmed through it earlier, but I didn't read it as ...

2025-05-26T12:35:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…5g35
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I skimmed through it earlier, but I didn't read it as openwashing.

More like: Web2 went down the route of open-apis, and it failed because [reasons], and MCP is trying the same things and will face the same headwinds.

Finally, India has an updated Postal code boundary map. ...

2025-05-11T06:31:54Z

Finally, India has an updated Postal code boundary map.

https://github.com/ramSeraph/indian_admin_boundaries/releases/tag/postal

The older ones were all guesswork and outdated; it’s nice to have a modern version. But there’s still so many errors looks like.

At the FOSS Bangalore meetup, and Suman Vijeta from Pratham Books ...

2025-04-26T09:14:28Z

At the FOSS Bangalore meetup, and Suman Vijeta from Pratham Books is talking about StoryWeaver, a FOSS platform for CC-licensed audio and graphic books for Kids.

It seems to be a great OPDS success story, where the vast majority of their traffic (100M+ users?) is via third parties like Google syndicating their content via OPDS.

Great audience at PuneFOSS, just wish there was more FOSS in the ...

2025-04-05T06:50:12Z

Great audience at PuneFOSS, just wish there was more FOSS in the agenda.

Come over to chat during the break, would love to hear more from the Pune community.

The bird site is full of #Ghibli style AI art, so here’s a ...

2025-03-27T14:02:26Z

The bird site is full of #Ghibli style AI art, so here’s a peace offering - I will send you a Ghibli postcard (Anywhere on Earth) if you send me your address and your favorite Ghibli film name.

https://captnemo.in/contact/ has all the ways you can send me your address.

[@fossunited](https://mas.to/@fossunited )'s IndiaFOSS this ...

2025-03-02T11:56:28Z

[@fossunited](https://mas.to/@fossunited )'s IndiaFOSS this year is hosting devrooms and the CFP is open now.

If you run a FOSS-adjacent community in India (PL/ML/AI/Hardware/Data/...), please propose a devroom. You get the chance to host a mini-conference inside India's largest FOSS conference.

https://forum.fossunited.org/t/call-for-devrooms-for-indiafoss-2025/5290

Devroom CFP Closes: 31-03-2025
IndiaFOSS: (20|21)-09-2025

There's a new Kindle Jailbreak out, which works for all known ...

2025-01-03T13:16:23Z

There's a new Kindle Jailbreak out, which works for all known Kindle firmwares (with a minor gotcha for the new color variants).

https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/

The PDF is searchable for me.

2024-12-13T06:23:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…d3jg
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The PDF is searchable for me.

Updated my now page for December: https://captnemo.in/now/ ...

2024-12-04T15:45:25Z

Updated my now page for December: https://captnemo.in/now/

I'm organizing Puzzled Pint on the 10th, and a talk by Carl Malamud (npub1jre…alex) on the 13th. https://hasgeek.com/servantsofknowledge/geekup-with-carl/

I'm considering going to the VCV Rack workshop tomorrow at BIC as well (https://blrhubba.in/event/8c9c9274-2e0e-4318-8bf6-ce4c1061b9e9)

Sighted Linux/X11 in the wild at Cessna today on their CT Scan ...

2024-11-18T05:37:17Z

Sighted Linux/X11 in the wild at Cessna today on their CT Scan systems (GE Healthcare). One of the windows became unresponsive while trying to show a specific scan, and the doctor launched a terminal and ran xkill to terminate the window.

Have you considered Typst? It is the biggest modern contender to ...

2024-11-14T10:39:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…0qjc
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Have you considered Typst? It is the biggest modern contender to LaTeX, and their equation editing looks much simpler: https://typst.app/docs/reference/math/

Someone please get Ather (Indian 2-wheeler EV) to switch to E2EE ...

2024-10-20T14:03:03Z

Someone please get Ather (Indian 2-wheeler EV) to switch to E2EE data sync.

There is no reason for this data to be accessible to Ather (and thus to a court-warrant).

https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas#india-automobile-privacy-review

Ente and Immicj. Or if it’s for social media, Pixelfed.

2024-10-17T09:30:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…vkqt
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Ente and Immicj. Or if it’s for social media, Pixelfed.

In today’s #cybersecurity news, CXOs deciding to sell the data ...

2024-10-10T03:08:20Z

In today’s #cybersecurity news, CXOs deciding to sell the data for personal profit.

https://m.economictimes.com/tech/startups/data-breach-hacker-claims-senior-star-health-executive-sold-data-of-31-million-customers/articleshow/114087563.cms

Looks like my idea isn't that unique, I found a few ...

2024-10-09T11:21:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…clsa
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Looks like my idea isn't that unique, I found a few implementations, but nothing that seems maintained.

https://github.com/rpatterson/github-apt-repos

https://github.com/ayufan/debian-repository

There's also https://github.com/wimpysworld/deb-get, which seems like a curated repo for several github-hosted-deb-releases, but no frappe books.

I am wondering if you could create a local ISO-style Debian repo ...

2024-10-09T09:11:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…uzdt
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I am wondering if you could create a local ISO-style Debian repo that syncs to GitHub releases via a cron.

The /releases/latest/file.deb trick should auto-resolve to the latest version, and surely some Debian script that can generate a valid Packages.xml exists. Are the packages signed?

Mercari India Security Conclave is happening tomorrow ...

2024-10-04T12:23:49Z

Mercari India Security Conclave is happening tomorrow (Bangalore). I'm speaking about my work at endoflife.date, and lessons for vulnerability management, and what lies ahead for supply chain security. There's also a panel discussion about security career ladders that I'm excited about.

📅 Date: Saturday, 5th October 2024
🕕 Time: 10:00 AM
📍 Venue: Vaishnavi Tech Park, Sarjapur, Bangalore

RSVP: https://www.linkedin.com/events/mercariindiasecurityconclave7245018464094986240/

And of course, the Indian crypto crowd had realised that they can ...

2024-10-01T04:04:08Z

And of course, the Indian crypto crowd had realised that they can make money off the government by joining the DPI bandwagon.

https://yourstory.com/2024/09/techsparks-blockchain-technology-transparent-coindcx-ceo

All of Indian crypto meets government-adjacent crypto projects have been riddled with terrible implementations, needless costs, and opaque proprietary solutions. This includes a Vaccine certification, as well as the DLT based system TRAI uses for anti-spam. And there’s probably e-RUPI/CBDC as well, which nobody wants to talk about.

I am reminded of the strategy the Zomato hacker took: They ...

2024-09-23T10:23:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…0wnv
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I am reminded of the strategy the Zomato hacker took: They “promised” to not sell the data as long as Zomato started a real Bug Bounty Program.

And now, 5ish years later, Zomato brags about this program to its shareholders.

Their privacy policy claims: > [DotPe] adopts reasonable ...

2024-09-23T05:44:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…9rtk
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Their privacy policy claims:

> [DotPe] adopts reasonable security practices and procedures to implement technical, operational, managerial and physical security control measures in order to protect the Personal Information in its possession from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

As a cybersecurity professional, I can confirm that that they in fact, did not adopt reasonable security practices that would be "commensurate with the industry standards".

Some really nice security research about DotPe, which builds ...

2024-09-23T05:39:44Z

Some really nice security research about DotPe, which builds table ordering systems reliant on the QR codes.

Apparently, they have zero auth, and you can glean some really interesting insights.

https://peabee.substack.com/p/whats-inside-the-qr-code-menu-at (Taken down now).

Archive: https://archive.is/1a0v9

Moved the Curated calendar to the blr.today home page. Created a ...

2024-09-22T16:21:55Z

Moved the Curated calendar to the blr.today home page. Created a separate page to list all the calendars: https://blr.today/calendars/

Also, added a few calendars for some neighbourhoods. Looking for quirky descriptions of #bangalore neighbourhoods - please send them my way.

My favourite so far: #Koramangala is the Bangalore neighbourhood with highest ratio of billionaires to metro stations in the world.

Finished watching “Lessons in Chemistry” last night. Great ...

2024-09-22T07:47:37Z

Finished watching “Lessons in Chemistry” last night. Great show, thanks for the recommendation [@Theorem_Poem](https://mstdn.social/@Theorem_Poem ).

Writing this tiny one paragraph note probably took me an hour or ...

2024-09-17T10:07:40Z

Writing this tiny one paragraph note probably took me an hour or more of research.

I really care about being endoflife.date being helpful to users, and just renaming from VMWare -> Omnissa would be anything but that. So I put in the time to research instead.

Now live at https://endoflife.date/horizon. Feedback is welcome.

I like the idea of a local postgres/redis installation, but ...

2024-09-17T09:52:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…3lmy
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I like the idea of a local postgres/redis installation, but don't think this should need a version manager to run a separate version.

(TIL asdf supports even stuff like postgres!)

Maybe someone needs to start a Ente hosting service with a ...

2024-09-08T18:14:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…7ph4
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Maybe someone needs to start a Ente hosting service with a picodollar per byte pricing, like how Tarsnap is priced: https://www.tarsnap.com/picoUSD-why.html

#ideas

Thanks to the Ente.io people for explaining me why Cloud Storage ...

2024-09-08T18:10:01Z

Thanks to the Ente.io people for explaining me why Cloud Storage Tiers grow in weird steps (5GB -> 50GB -> 500GB -> 2TB etc).

Companies reselling storage make money from “unused storage”. So you want to upsell to a significant bump, so that the expected usage is actually much under the next tier. This lets you optimise your disk utilisation ratios while aligning it to profits.

The talk mentioned that they are thinking of a pricing drop, but ...

2024-09-08T18:06:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…hfqy
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The talk mentioned that they are thinking of a pricing drop, but I went to the booth where they said “they can’t beat Apple on pricing”.

But I am very surprised - surely reselling Backblaze/Wasabi or even running your own Ceph cluster on-prem makes sense. You still get the same margins but undercut Apple/Google.

Was discussing with @npub1nmy…0y83 offline about this, and he ...

2024-09-08T14:49:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…6mry
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Was discussing with nilesh (npub1nmy…0y83) offline about this, and he mentioned the “reduce your atomic size” approach, which I endorse as far as possible.

I can’t Git everything, but I damn well will try.

Anoop’s talking about the “File-based approach” for saving ...

2024-09-08T04:49:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…h9nc
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Anoop’s talking about the “File-based approach” for saving API collections. If you like building like this, you might like my https://github.com/captn3m0/plaintext-everything which tracks various tools and formats for storing everything* in plaintext. You’d be surprised at what all can be in plaintext.

You get version control for free if you do plain-text, as Anoop mentioned - it is the easiest way to bootstrap a sync/collaborate experience.

Excited for Anoop’s opening talk today at #indiafoss2024 ...

2024-09-08T04:13:50Z

Excited for Anoop’s opening talk today at #indiafoss2024 building Bruno.

The Namma Yatri talk reminds me: We need a no-tracking, no Google ...

2024-09-07T05:27:01Z

The Namma Yatri talk reminds me: We need a no-tracking, no Google rebuild of Namma Yatri, and get it on FDroid

Any takers? #ideas

@npub1c4m…wtqs Hey, there plans to drop pricing? I’m paying ...

2024-09-07T05:03:59Z

Ente (npub1c4m…wtqs) Hey, there plans to drop pricing? I’m paying significantly lesser for Apple iCloud (2TB) compared to what ente wants.

Argh. Don’t like this promotion of Insta/LinkedIn/X without a ...

2024-09-07T04:47:23Z

Argh. Don’t like this promotion of Insta/LinkedIn/X without a single mention of Mastodon when #indiafoss2024 has a fediverse presence (FOSS United (npub10dc…ul8g))

Doing some guerrilla marketing for blr.today at #indiafoss2024 ...

2024-09-07T04:25:32Z

Doing some guerrilla marketing for blr.today at #indiafoss2024

Unpopular Opinion: I don’t use version managers. I run ...

2024-09-07T03:48:55Z

Unpopular Opinion: I don’t use version managers. I run everything on the distro-default python/node/Ruby as much as I can. I find them a crutch for distros that don’t ship new versions, and a source for more problems.

I similarly dislike that virtualenvs in Python include python itself. Similarly, I hate that bundler downgrades itself to the version in the lockfile as a hack for deterministic behaviour.

This is also why I find it hard to switch away from Arch.

If you'd like to take a trip down to Goa to read books this ...

2024-09-07T03:18:20Z

If you'd like to take a trip down to Goa to read books this september, Champaca is hosting a Reading Retreat: https://champaca.in/products/the-champaca-reading-retreat-september-2024

Zepto has done some financial engineering to dodge FDI ...

2024-09-06T14:53:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…t48n
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Zepto has done some financial engineering to dodge FDI regulations and call themselves profitable across 75% of their stores.

One of the Arch reasons for me is that all dev tooling is ...

2024-08-31T02:31:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…mtu7
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One of the Arch reasons for me is that all dev tooling is packaged up on the AUR, so I can stick to os-packages almost everywhere.

nvm, pyenv etc to start, but even other shell-first tooling like https://github.com/scmbreeze/scm_breeze.

2. Isn't text-fragments close enough? ...

2024-08-22T15:22:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…frtc
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2. Isn't text-fragments close enough? https://web.dev/articles/text-fragments

I updated my ideas repo last week with some more of my ideas. ...

2024-08-13T02:12:51Z

I updated my ideas repo last week with some more of my ideas.

https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas

If any of these sounds like fun, take a look:

* A physical variable fuzzy clock
* A curl impersonation proxy
* A Whisper UX Design Pattern
* Tareeqh-pe-Tareeqh visualizer
* Mobile App Traffic RE Platform
* One-Page (RSVP|EventHosting) Platform on Edge Compute
* Price Index for Indian Grocery Websites
* Bangalore Adblock Art Project
* PURL Canonicalization

#ideas

The transcript link on the post doesn't work.

2024-08-08T04:29:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…2355
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The transcript link on the post doesn't work.

If you search the php docs for RFCs, the only hits are upstream ...

2024-08-02T12:05:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…axrq
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If you search the php docs for RFCs, the only hits are upstream RFCs (such as mail/url parsing), or occasional comments clarifying the points from the PHP RFC: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%253Awww.php.net+https%253A%252F%252Fwiki.php.net%252Frfc%252F

On the other hand, Python docs love to link to PEPs "for more details": https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adocs.python.org+-site%3A%22peps.python.org%22+PEP+-%22what%27s+new%22

A lot of my angst about Python's terrible documentation can ...

2024-08-02T11:59:29Z

A lot of my angst about Python's terrible documentation can be boiled down to:

"If your documentation requires your user to read a specification, you have failed terribly"

Python suffers this throughout the ecosystem - this is especially visible in the new-ish Packaging Docs, but is even true much earlier. A lot of python documentation links to the PEP, or in some cases just dumps the ABNF grammar at the end-user.

**PL docs are meant for end-users, not language developers**.

Life Pro Tip: If you never accept the new Business ToS from ...

2024-08-02T11:28:41Z

Life Pro Tip: If you never accept the new Business ToS from WhatsApp, businesses can not initiate a conversation with you on WhatsApp. Cuts down spam drastically.