Chris McDonough ✅

Python hacker. Recent obsessions: NixOS, MicroPython. Virginia, US.

GitHub: https://github.com/mcdonc
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ChrisMcDonough
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chmcdonough/

Public Key

npub1c3659tvqna8pafsrmnzhqce03ylwpxv0amy4p0fntth8mhts6drqd4ydp2

NIP-05 Address

chrism_at_chattingdarkly.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvga2z4kqf7ns75cpae3tsvvhcj0hqnx87aj2sh5e44mnam4cdx3spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dszcn2su

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1c3659tvqna8pafsrmnzhqce03ylwpxv0amy4p0fntth8mhts6drqd4ydp2

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Last Notes

2026-08-05 01:55:22 UTC

The same petty crowd is at it again. Appalling.
https://domenkozar.com/2026/08/04/nixpkgs-has-a-due-process-problem/
#nix #nixos

2026-06-01 10:20:55 UTC

Devenv intro vid
#nix #nixos
https://youtu.be/Oj9AxyiaVvU

2026-05-08 07:10:51 UTC

I have a homelab. It's called production.

2025-06-10 11:51:33 UTC

Apple events giving off more Tom and Jean-Ralphio's Entertainment 720 vibes every year.

2025-06-09 10:55:31 UTC

[rushes up quickly, stops short of your face]
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[apologizes with his eyes, turns and runs]

2025-06-08 12:54:16 UTC

I'm still on a Michael Caine kick.
Get Carter is one of the best movies I've ever had the pleasure of never having seen before. He is still young and dead-eyed but also the most naturally high-floating piece of shit amongst many other lower floaters. Trainspotting level evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NtstlDW0Zo

2025-06-02 14:04:46 UTC

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"oh my god it's all shell"
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/114/614/142/530/617/489/original/872bd20df7aaf295.png

2025-06-01 04:55:30 UTC

If you think your colleagues give you a hard time when you're wrong, just wait until you're right.

2025-06-01 02:49:35 UTC

Scotty talking to the ship computer has now been rebranded as vibe coding.

2025-05-31 11:05:31 UTC

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t-shirt I'm wearing now
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/114/602/116/971/001/585/original/b38818bf78f7e8b1.jpg

2025-05-29 09:24:45 UTC

The Roman Republic sent its consuls off for years on end to sack Gaul. He might forget about this tariffs thing if we did.

2025-05-28 07:00:11 UTC

If Hannibal had crossed the Alps without elephants, nobody would remember him, so I am commuting on my elephant this week.

2025-05-25 09:12:48 UTC

NixOS 102: NixOS on a Digital Ocean Droplet
All hail nixos-generators!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1E8yBqDGFk
#nix #nixos

2025-05-24 21:27:09 UTC

Whenever I see someone tell me it took them "five minutes" to do anything even remotely complicated in #NixOS I know they are in sales mode, not reality mode. It takes me that long just to remember what "specialArgs" is.

2025-05-23 02:38:46 UTC

"dysk" is way better than "df" for seeing the the usage status of actual disks:
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/114/554/825/395/692/436/original/00c590142bf15c8c.png

2025-05-22 00:32:19 UTC

Nice to see that there have been at least 20 #Nix / #NixOS videos published on YouTube within the last 5 days. It was getting pretty sparse for a while.

2025-05-18 12:11:52 UTC

NixOS 100: Defining and Using Custom NixOS Options
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5vyoBqYfuE
#nix #nixos

2025-05-15 20:48:00 UTC

From the radio: "A third less films were made last yea...."
Me, from, across the room: "Fewer."
Literally everyone in earshot: "Shut up, Chris."

2025-05-11 09:51:24 UTC

I created a video that is hopefully useful for folks that have a little NixOS experience, and are whom are still curious but not yet religious about it:
NixOS 99: NixOS Config Beyond the Basics as a Mere Mortal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3S2fG6CLRw
#nix #nixos

2025-05-09 01:39:15 UTC

I get it already, girls next door who blast En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It" whenever I walk by. I'm aware.

2025-05-07 22:55:32 UTC

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you'll be back :)

2025-05-07 20:48:36 UTC

It's clear that women design men's pants. We don't need 20 belt loops. Like, literally maybe 4 would do.

2025-05-07 17:40:10 UTC

This is the only practical written advice I've seen about composing #NixOS configuration:
https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/nixos-with-flakes/modularize-the-configuration

2025-05-02 00:24:08 UTC

NixOS 98: Flox vs Devenv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovYw7cEG8hs
#Nix #NixOS #Flox #Devenv

2025-04-25 06:05:48 UTC

As someone with a vaguely anti-pronounceable name, don't apologize before you try to say it. It's not about you, it's literally about me..

2025-04-25 00:00:13 UTC

I'm close now and I may opt to go full compu-anchorite if it has tax benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorite

2025-04-16 07:14:14 UTC

When evaluating a new piece of software, I put it in the "suspect" bucket if most of the folks writing about it are on Medium.

2025-03-31 15:22:20 UTC

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as long as they know how to write HTML forms, i welcome them

2025-03-31 14:56:50 UTC

There is nothing I hate more than creating HTML forms. I am grateful to AI for being reasonably good at it.

2025-03-18 21:41:14 UTC

The poor Ubuntu community
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/114/185/604/792/296/537/original/e5e457d56ad24862.png

2025-03-18 07:38:25 UTC

Nothing worse than an optimist programmer.

2025-03-17 07:44:04 UTC

Don't need to be smart to be a decent programmer.
Folks capture the state of the world inside their head, and then commit it to a mental stack. They move up and down the stack to recall the world as it was a day ago or a minute ago. Smarter people have larger stacks.
If you have an average sized stack like me (roughly three, blown by switching browser tabs), augment your memory by writing things down. It's much slower but it produces the same result.

2025-03-17 04:17:54 UTC

What a wonderful character. Watched all of it, and enjoyed every second.
https://youtu.be/hF8jHy307DI

2025-03-13 01:18:02 UTC

Politics driven development

2025-03-13 00:35:12 UTC

One of the dumbest fucken things is Slack and Discord "replies" that start a subthread in a conversation. Great, now it's reddit and I have to go fucken expand all that misery, good work.

2025-03-11 19:36:22 UTC

The one role you never want to play is the most Git-experienced on your team.

2025-03-10 00:41:38 UTC

Forever-unused props for a notional #nixos gag video
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/114/135/354/002/165/023/original/7fdc3a3e06ad2e26.jpg

2025-03-09 21:22:00 UTC

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and oh yeah the counter is gold.. https://discourse.nixos.org/t/determinate-nix-3-0/61202/161

2025-03-09 21:16:02 UTC

Jesus Christ. i just caught myself in a weak moment about to flag a comment on the Nix Discourse as "inappropriate". Thank the lord I was sober enough to not click yes.

2025-03-09 17:36:45 UTC

One of the best features of Mastodon is that nobody who matters is listening.

2025-03-09 17:12:29 UTC

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what's good for the goose is good for the gander i guess, but all of it is fucken nonsense

2025-03-09 13:36:51 UTC

More pointless shit-stirring. It will never end until the professional dividers are rejected.
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/we-should-urgently-ban-and-denounce-determinate-systems/61356

2025-03-08 23:19:28 UTC

I am currently contracted to the US federal government. It's likely that soon my contract will vanish.
I am looking for a company or a contract that needs a remote/US-DC-area senior developer/architect with very deep Python, UNIX and networking experience, and extensive cloud experience.
I am also very interested in #nix and #nixos.
Boosts appreciated!
#getfedihired
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chmcdonough/
https://github.com/mcdonc

2025-03-05 06:35:36 UTC

The evaporation of the post-war liberal order will make for some great history podcasts in 300 years, but not all that keen on being a set extra meanwhile.

2025-03-02 04:57:28 UTC

Fuck you GitHub, how do I cancel my Copilot subscription, you ghouls.

2025-02-24 06:16:30 UTC

I'm desperately uncool but it saves a lot of money.

2025-02-16 17:47:09 UTC

Is it safe to post this?
https://youtu.be/MhmsXl51EDU

2025-02-12 01:57:13 UTC

I'm angry about a lot of things but I assure you if you care nothing about anything I care about, I'm a lovely person.

2025-01-26 17:22:23 UTC

Repairable midrange HMD Android phone. The Fusion model is on Amazon now for $175. Probably the slightly more expensive model is my next phone.
https://youtu.be/mgXtPp3n5IQ

2025-01-25 22:32:21 UTC

This hits pretty hard. Python's Michael Foord (developer of mock, and many other things, and a solid person) has died.
#python
https://ntoll.org/article/my-friend-michael/

2025-01-25 18:00:25 UTC

isd is packaged as a Nix flake
'
https://isd-project.github.io/isd/#__tabbed_1_2

2025-01-25 11:45:56 UTC

Seems like a public service
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/113/888/824/251/731/353/original/332601df733bc1b2.png

2025-01-24 15:01:06 UTC

Using oldschool group communications like email and IRC is liberating: you can't correct your errors, and nobody else can either.

2025-01-24 03:14:03 UTC

I am always happy when I have to package a #Nix package written in Go. Those things tend to just work without much dependency misery.

2025-01-16 02:03:24 UTC

For the last six months or so, my Mastodon instance has not been able to show previews of YouTube links. I upgraded to the most recent release (v4.3.2) in hopes that it will have been fixed. It was, for "normal" YouTube links, but still not for shortened ones (youtu.be links).
I was grateful to find this isolated fix to the problem, which just involves changing Mastodon's link scraper user agent:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/31462#issuecomment-2375525764

2025-01-15 03:32:18 UTC

If you have a keyboard that uses the Fn key to repurpose the arrow keys (e.g. Fn+Up maps to PgUp), it's irritating because the Fn key is on the left side of the keyboard so you have to use two hands. Here's a bit of #Nix config that maps Right-Ctrl in the context of those kinds of keystrokes to Fn so you can use one hand.
https://github.com/mcdonc/.nixconfig/blob/master/common.nix#L127

2025-01-09 14:50:32 UTC

80 columns ought to be enough for anybody.

2025-01-07 22:55:07 UTC

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sorry for your loss. hiliariously, you've hit upon one of my job's main challenges. nvidia uses the term "hybrid mode" to name the graphics card operation mode on this "optimus" laptop; in "hybrid mode" it's basically an intel card until it isn't through some software trickery. it has nothing to do with "hybrid sleep" but of course it's impossible to tell google about that. the laptop sleeps fine when it's in "discrete (nvidia) mode", just not when it's in "hybrid mode". utterly maddening.

2025-01-07 22:30:34 UTC

My primary gig of googling "bash for loop", and my secondary job that I can't remember now are still in play but I've now started a third side gig googling "nvidia hybrid mode thinkpad p52 sleep doesnt work linux".

2025-01-06 22:10:01 UTC

"W", check your privilege. You're the only letter that isn't a single syllable.

2024-12-27 19:47:18 UTC

"I hate AI" is the new "ban all cars."

2024-12-02 03:49:50 UTC

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I didn't either, but I've consumed hundreds of hours of Feynman-related content on YouTube.
I can empathize with her point of view, but I think to the extent her critique reflects on Feynman himself it may be a case of judging someone in the past with today's standards.
Passions require champions, and he certainly lit a fire under many folks. We might bemoan the fire it lit, but somebody had to do it, and anybody who lit the fire in the past was bound to get it wrong by today's ilk.

2024-11-13 01:44:12 UTC

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can't go wrong with hookers and blow, its time-tested

2024-11-12 23:58:52 UTC

The "age" encryption and decryption tool is nice because it allows you to use SSH keypairs to encrypt and decrypt, and your team already has and understands those.
Unfortunately, "age" for decrypt doesn't behave like "ssh" for login. It won't automatically loop over private keys in ~/.ssh for you to try decrypting using each, you have to be explicit about the identity file. It also doesn't communicate with an SSH agent.
Somebody, please get to convincing the age folks it should do both. :)

2024-11-12 21:39:03 UTC

It gobsmacks me that the leadership of open source communities who make a big deal out of "safety" choose to deploy DIscourse.
Discourse is a fucken stalking machine.

2024-11-12 00:07:47 UTC

Everything you trust and respect was created by someone with a passion who did it in contravention of the rules.

2024-11-09 23:15:24 UTC

Liberals have made "dude" a slur apparently.

2024-10-30 11:08:37 UTC

Surprise! Nix has a new name, "PuritySpiral." For your convenience, a new module has been added that detects activity that belies any sympathy for capitalism. When active, if you're not using Nix from within a dank, smoky party grotto planning the next Occupy, it shuts itself down. It's always active.

2024-10-29 01:39:13 UTC

Before we had social media, we knew absolutely nothing about each other, and it was glorious.

2024-10-28 19:26:23 UTC

I'm looking to join a cult, but all the cool ones forbid drinking, so they're right out.

2024-10-09 22:56:23 UTC

Literally just asked a door dash delivery person if he knows how street numbers work. He said no.

2024-10-05 12:46:44 UTC

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does this mean your job search was successful (i've been stressing about it, sounds unfun)

2024-09-28 08:59:55 UTC

Your life may be shit, but be consoled by the fact that 11th century kings and queens could not have the shirt or dress you're wearing right now, no matter how much money they spent trying to get it.

2024-09-18 19:56:51 UTC

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https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/113/160/317/140/401/629/original/4f486bdb9df68eee.png

2024-09-06 06:12:56 UTC

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I love both of these performances to death, but I concur.

2024-09-04 14:55:39 UTC

Best Joker

2024-09-03 11:55:08 UTC

The #Nix Constitutional Assembly produces a draft of the constitution:
https://github.com/NixOS/nix-constitutional-assembly/blob/main/constitution.md

2024-09-03 09:06:08 UTC

There is no situation dire enough that talking to a journalist can't make it worse.

2024-09-02 08:42:08 UTC

VT100: the original dark mode.

2024-09-01 00:15:40 UTC

TIL that Oasis has fans.

2024-08-28 22:37:04 UTC

Discourse is a great idea.
https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/chattingdarkly-files/media_attachments/files/113/042/037/328/716/219/original/a6a6360a939412f1.png

2024-08-23 18:46:43 UTC

If you want to avoid a ballroom blitz, arrange your room so don't have a back nor a corner.

2024-08-20 08:31:33 UTC

I still don't know what the Python walrus operator does. Don't tell me, let me be surprised.

2024-08-17 16:04:18 UTC

My first true introduction to the culture was to ask my co-worker Ken Manheimer "do we need to wear a suit?" He looked at me with pity and said "no man, we're hackers."

2024-08-16 10:52:26 UTC

Each day, a little more of the culture I grew up in is lost. But it could be worse, I could be a Deadhead.

2024-08-14 23:20:21 UTC

Apropos of nothing, I would like to say how much I like @npub1xsy…e8n0 . He is one of the most positive people on the planet.

2024-08-10 21:32:31 UTC

A blog post about the recent suspension of Tim Peters from Python
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim

2024-08-04 21:37:44 UTC

Does anyone know of a painless way to set up a mailing list in 2024?

2024-08-03 06:12:41 UTC

I've decided to revise my fashion but I'm lazy so you'll see me in gopnik track suits like a fat Matt Taibbi from here on in.