École des Bro-Arts

Switchy leatherman into bad puns, thick boys, and distributed systems. Purveyor of fine jockstrap selfies. Woof.group admin.

Jim Starkey: "Of interest only to third-rate academics a few papers short of a tenure package."

Reddit: "would never ever ever hire this degenerate holy shit"

Peter Watts: "The most innovative fanfic I've ever read."

Public Key

npub1dvavaz7chhk5saxajaemyhuuyk92xyfvxwjw7kvrqyx63w50aq7q2ysy2c

NIP-05 Address

aphyr@woof-group.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxkwkw30vtmm2gwnwewuajt7wztz4rzykr8f80txpszrdgh287s0qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds2zd03t

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1dvavaz7chhk5saxajaemyhuuyk92xyfvxwjw7kvrqyx63w50aq7q2ysy2c

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Last Notes

2026-10-25 22:53:04 UTC

I would like to encourage all of us to put aside our differences for a moment and enact legislation which requires political campaigns to pay you $5 for every unsolicited text message

2026-10-23 14:15:37 UTC

Ocean's Eleven, but it's a bunch of gays teaming up to steal jockstraps from an NFL locker room. You got your furry network security guy taking out the cameras, the smooth-talking chaos bisexual who seduces the guards, the extremely autistic lockpicking nerd, the Car Gay getaway driver, the muscle queen personal trainer who works as the man on the inside...

2026-10-01 14:36:41 UTC

Just heard a bank ad on the radio whose entire thesis is that they have real customer support people and won't make you talk to an AI chatbot

2026-08-28 14:19:00 UTC

The dishwasher limped along for another year with repairs but finally gave up the ghost early this month. It made it almost 15 years, it was time, haha.
New one cracks itself open when it's finished, instead of waiting for me to notice it and open it to finish drying. This means dishes now take approximately four hours, rather than two to three business days. Sometimes automation is good actually.

2026-08-27 01:07:36 UTC

Imagine in one month you'll be sent back in time to a period of your choosing, and you're invited to wreak havoc with your future knowledge. All you can bring is what you can remember. What would you memorize? Doesn't have to be comprehensive or the most important knowledge--just esoteric things you think would be fun to know.

2026-07-14 03:04:03 UTC

A house centipede just ran out of my CPAP tank when I took it out of the drying rack, so if anyone needs me I'll be never breathing again

2026-06-22 22:05:51 UTC

Our dear friend (and woof.group co-admin!) @nprofile…z7jx was doored on his bike and suffered a serious brain injury. If you'd like to help with his recovery, he's started a fundraiser:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-taber-recover-from-traumatic-brain-injury

2026-06-15 10:47:56 UTC

Sounds feasible; all we need to do is ensure no one under 18 has access to *checks notes* screens, books, magazines, videos, or cameras.
"Last week, the Prime Minister challenged tech companies so that Britain will be the first country in the world to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images – with a 3-month deadline to make meaningful progress."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-media-to-be-banned-for-under-16s-in-landmark-government-move-to-givekids-their-childhood-back

2026-06-12 12:04:11 UTC

"Hello, requesting donation for cover cost of previous AI agent use in dn42. aws bill 6531,30$. pls send donation to ethereum 0xABC (masked) for refund. thank you"
https://lantian.pub/en/article/fun/ai-agent-bankrupted-their-operator-scan-dn42lantian.lantian/

2026-05-30 19:10:25 UTC

Hey y'all, I know woof.group has been unusably slow this week--I think it's more of the AI crawler issue. I have a plan, but this week some big stuff came up that took priority. Still on my list, bear with me.

2026-05-20 17:33:43 UTC

On the other hand, I'm motivated to share what I do because I really want to help people. If it's just LLMs... it feels hollow. I think about this every time I've tried to work on open-source in the last few months.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48210740

2026-05-16 16:05:41 UTC

Dog snuggles on a rainy day
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/116/585/104/868/644/953/original/0ed7ff08c7cc8405.jpg

2026-04-15 15:09:38 UTC

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@nprofile…65q8 oh good Lord how would we even *start* to comply with this? ToS terms passing on those requirements to users? Yeesh.

2026-04-07 17:02:25 UTC

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@nprofile…65q8 That bit about Fedi folks not wanting to boost/post sexual content because they're worried about being reported/blocked is a whole thing. A good chunk of the reports we handle are people complaining about CWed & sensitive-media-flagged nudes.

2026-03-28 23:04:13 UTC

No Kings, Chicago
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/116/309/297/222/606/167/original/45c1bd9bd272dd8d.jpg

2026-02-19 16:21:28 UTC

A few years ago--I think this was a hike through Red River Gorge, with my dad.
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/116/098/206/929/481/995/original/2c7f2b0cdbe6b011.jpg

2026-02-03 14:27:40 UTC

I've been trying to teach my kids that they should stop wearing and listening to the same things everyone else does at school. It's OK to get wild haircuts, piece their noses, go thrash around at electro-punk shows.
After all...
Children should be scene and not herd.

2026-01-25 19:04:14 UTC

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@nprofile…6z3g jeg liker Norsk, men jeg kan snakke en litt bare

2026-01-25 18:42:02 UTC

Er du lei av å gå glipp av Flytogbusstoget? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEgYqqkWuF0

2025-12-28 17:56:16 UTC

The biggest metal fan at the gym is called "Vent Reznor".
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/798/476/266/111/926/original/bff4ef9894fb3536.jpg

2025-12-16 06:09:03 UTC

As someone who runs my own blog, email, social media, backup system, home automation, business site, etc...
I feel like self-hosting digital services is a lot like backyard chickens. Rewarding, lots of control, independence from Big Egg, and a great reminder of why distribution of labor and efficiencies of scale are so important.

2025-11-30 22:45:21 UTC

Used the Windows machine (which has essentially a fresh Firefox install) to look at some steam turbine videogame tips on YouTube and it insists on showing me preroll ads for a.) guns and b.) some kind of Evangelical business cult (!?) devoted to ending Real Men (TM)'s addiction to "the P-word"
pussy???
pornography????
God it must be awful being straight

2025-11-08 19:26:19 UTC

This weight presses upon me every day. I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado which tears through our city. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help.
https://aphyr.com/posts/397-i-want-you-to-understand-chicago

2025-10-26 22:19:31 UTC

tell me your bank's marketing dept is run by cishets without telling me etc etc
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/442/781/305/020/930/original/ec0f0cb3365cf65d.png

2025-10-25 16:55:14 UTC

So uhhhhh I've been through a lot of padlocks and it is *surprisingly* hard to find a well-proportioned, attractive, and properly weighted lock for a typical chain collar. Many locks are slightly too big or too small, or (as in the Titalium series or the Masterlock plastic-cased ones) are too light, and flip up obnoxiously.
Anyway, consider this a recommendation for the Abus Marine 75IB/30, which is corrosion resistant, nicely finished, and pleasantly heavy. I'm not collared, but for reference:
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/435/846/451/407/234/original/9fe4e67be8dc9ea7.jpg
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/435/846/539/819/443/original/f396c6d4cfa3a064.jpg

2025-10-21 19:51:45 UTC

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@nprofile…2y44 If we can turn the financial crisis into findom surely we can learn to eroticize openAI's rapacious regurgitation of the intellectual commons

2025-10-21 15:21:23 UTC

Just realized with abject horror we're about two years out, tops, from the gooners deliberately eroticizing AI slop. Nonsensical, catchy beats over tracks of six-fingered men with impossibly huge dongs.
"You can't even get off to reality any more", a voice whispers. "Spend hours gooning to AI."
An incredibly handsome man turns his head three hundred sixty degrees as his torso morphs into a giraffe. Wavy, mostly-legible text declares "Your Boss Demands It: Embrace AI Transformation".

2025-10-10 21:08:02 UTC

I tried "Venom: The Last Dance" on the plane and ugh i don't understand how you can take someone as sexy as Tom Hardy and a premise of "being constantly fucked by a hungry tentacle monster" and make it that boring

2025-08-28 17:50:15 UTC

I keep coming back to Isabel Fall's "Attack Helicopter":
"When I was a woman I wanted to machine myself.
I loved nails cut like laser arcs and painted violent-bright in bathrooms that smelled like laboratories. I wanted to grow thick legs with fat and muscle that made shapes under the skin like Nazca lines. I loved my birth control, loved that I could turn my period off, loved the home beauty-feedback kits that told you what to eat and dose to adjust your scent, your skin, your moods."

2025-06-19 20:31:11 UTC

Pretty happy with the legs today
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/711/924/271/702/935/original/a1d88bb1ef272fec.jpg

2025-06-10 11:20:46 UTC

A couple months ago, marching downtown, I chatted with a serviceman who said his biggest fear was that Trump would deploy the military against civilian protestors. Today, Trump dispatched 700 marines to LA to do... what, exactly? Shoot US citizens? I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this goes nowhere good.
https://apnews.com/article/marines-protests-california-deployed-trump-503e1de25b45c760218d8ae879c8d2d3
Sorry y'all, I try to keep the rough political talk to a minimum here, but this is really weighing on me.

2025-05-23 13:54:29 UTC

may you be as happy as a dog receiving a little piece of prosciutto

2025-05-17 06:06:56 UTC

Halfway into Horizon: Forbidden West and I just have to say it: Aloy is a menace who must be stopped. She's rude to her friends, blows off everyone because she has to "Save The World Right Now", then spends weeks gallivanting around old ruins looking up shipping manifests and blowing holes in every thousand-year-old structure she can find. She slaughters entire campgrounds essentially on a whim. She waltzes blithely into tense negotiations with zero cultural competence.

2025-05-11 04:28:40 UTC

One of the many upsides of dating an excellent host is that you pick up skills like "assembling a killer charcuterie board with Costco specials"
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/487/306/963/328/035/original/02d3d930dd5b8e2e.jpg

2025-05-10 05:22:36 UTC

let's check out what's in the old porn folder
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/481/856/907/763/929/original/fe0f379e060d6294.mp4

2025-05-09 18:35:26 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 The court having to find "that it is appropriate to make the order for the purpose of preventing significant harm to individuals in the United Kingdom" is an interesting phrase. Wonder if that's more of a cursory "oh yeah, porn is intrinsically harmful" sort of thing, or if they have to go and find people who were harmed and argue for it.

2025-05-09 18:30:24 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 Is there a sort of summary judgement process here that gets Ofcom to a DNS block?

2025-05-09 17:52:22 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 When we were first talking about OSA risks, a fair number of folks thought that the law either did not apply outside the UK, or would not be enforced against foreign entities. Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out against a US LLC.

2025-05-09 03:57:49 UTC

"It's not bondage, it's an enrichment activity!"

2025-04-19 19:41:15 UTC

Leathermen... I'm just saying.... Marching for an end to unjust imprisonment and extrajudicial deportations also gives you the chance to check out Hot Cops (TM)
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/366/315/092/518/499/original/c3432f4d8178c904.jpg

2025-04-17 19:19:11 UTC

Set a recurring calendar entry for calling my senators and representatives, sending in comments on policy proposals, figuring out where to march, etc. Hoping that if I allocate a specific time it'll help me panic less during, well, the rest of the day.
Every morning I wake up consumed with dread, anxiety, anger over what the Trump administration is doing. Keep reminding myself that I must channel that energy or it helps no one.

2025-04-13 16:23:01 UTC

This makes a lot more sense when you realize the census counts a 130-person polycule as a single relationship.
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/331/573/031/215/752/original/08819d3fc7117e4c.png

2025-04-11 15:57:35 UTC

So uhhh has anyone figured out a good solution for the Fediverse Chick spam problem yet? I'm *this* close to hacking in a terrible filter on incoming messages that rejects everything starting with "Hi, I'm Nicole! ..."

2025-04-08 23:06:21 UTC

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@nprofile…0n93 Absolutely incredible. "You do not need to worry about this", they kept saying.

2025-04-08 22:58:21 UTC

Xfinity more than doubled my rate, so I cancelled. Called and asked that they terminate service at the end of the current billing cycle, so I would not be billed again.
Xfinity not only billed me again, but when I called, informed me that although they were going to disconnect service, they intended to keep billing me in May, and June, and July, and forever, unless I explicitly opted out. We went around in circles for an hour.

2025-04-02 19:22:03 UTC

Tag yourself on Maslow's Sinful Staircase. I'm "Plenty of Pickles"
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/269/990/809/564/984/original/116b7016f095164b.jpg

2025-04-02 15:15:15 UTC

Dapper lil' man
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/268/940/103/978/864/original/9e82c712b16a8fd4.jpg

2025-03-30 17:40:28 UTC

when people ask me
"kyle, what is the secret to finding bugs in databases"
I usually try to give serious answers about state spaces, the long-world hypothesis, concurrency intervals, falsifiability, etc. But with the rise of segregationist anti-DEI views, I'm starting to think I should tell them that being a good distributed engineer starts with being gay. GAYYYYYYYYYY. 🌈

2025-03-28 00:52:03 UTC

Laundry time!
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/237/315/719/766/420/original/792edd8b427f2bee.jpg

2025-03-26 04:01:43 UTC

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@nprofile…8wcz I'm playing the Phantom Liberty endgame tonight, but also thinking of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Half Life, and ... Oh geez I feel like there's way more of these that I'm I can't remember

2025-03-26 02:36:59 UTC

God I fucking LOVE an ominous videogame funicular

2025-03-21 02:08:56 UTC

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I feel like so many spaceship plots could be solved by just... Sending another ship.
Oh wow we haven't heard back from the mission, oh no there's a mysterious signal, let's just sit here and not investigate!
Send. Two. Ships. Send eight! Chain them out, each one with instructions to jump back if it spots something out of the ordinary! Drop a constellation of five hundred satellites out there so you have some actual redundancy. Modern industrial bases mean SENDING MORE THAN ONE SHIP.

2025-03-21 01:23:50 UTC

"Atlas" (2024) is not exactly criterion collection material but while I am sick and shivering under these blankets it is delivering essential "giant robots fighting in space" images and for this I am thankful 🙏

2025-03-19 12:36:18 UTC

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@nprofile…fe8t yeah, I read that report too. Oooooooooof.

2025-03-19 02:59:01 UTC

An Immodest Proposal: "In light of Ms. Flanagan's argument that pornography is a major driver of men's sexual behavior, the solution seems clear. Straight pornography must be banned, and replaced with virtuous gay pornography as expeditiously as possible."
https://blog.woof.group/aphyr/an-immodest-proposal

2025-03-16 18:16:06 UTC

When you rotate conversation partners at the beer bust and wind up the odd man out with no one to talk to, that's "Brewsical Bears"

2025-03-12 04:50:41 UTC

I firmly feel that Cyberpunk 2077's "Hands" should be romanceable, and that you should call him Daddy.

2025-03-11 17:56:54 UTC

Pretty sure I just found an SQL injection vulnerability in Astound's security question fields.

2025-03-11 17:18:41 UTC

Calling your senators and representatives is one of the most effective and fastest ways to influence their positions on legislative issues. Posting and emails don't carry as much weight--place an actual call for maximum impact. Your congresspeople have friendly staff whose job it is to take your call, note your position on an issue, and tally it up. 5 Calls will give you the phone numbers to call, and easy scripts to follow. Takes, like, three minutes a call.
https://5calls.org/

2025-03-09 20:05:00 UTC

Oh, okay https://archive.is/okSlz
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/134/263/027/474/361/original/8aa771a67d64a900.png

2025-03-05 14:22:21 UTC

I am so, SO curious about the "Fediverse Chick" spam campaign. We've suspended, like, a dozen of her accounts so far and she just keeps going. I assume the end goal is getting money out of people, but like, why target Fedi and self-hosting OSS nerds? It's like Joanne the Scammer trying to grift her way through the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone 🤣
Reminds me of Darwin's Hawkmoths, growing incredibly specialized proboscises to suck nectar from equally specialized flowers: https://www.calacademy.org/learn-explore/specimens-in-focus/darwin%E2%80%99s-hawkmoth
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/110/268/636/533/059/original/1a0df99ce05193e7.png

2025-02-26 23:45:39 UTC

a C witch taught me how to do some very basic gdb and valgrind today and WOW debuggers are cool

2025-02-13 19:13:15 UTC

we and our 3438 advertising partners saw you from across the web and really liked your vibe

2025-02-08 03:07:19 UTC

The man in charge of the Bear Holes problem is Ryan Poles and I for one would like to see how he trains his O-line.
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/966/050/925/640/104/original/24dfe2c6eaf9b0d2.jpg

2025-02-04 15:49:03 UTC

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@nprofile…93ny @nprofile…x759 Oh I don't know about that. Most of us are doing a lot more off-camera than on, haha.

2025-02-04 15:18:18 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 oh pete, I hope they speak to this
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/946/273/004/490/111/original/c8e51797e8d5e33f.png

2025-02-04 06:13:33 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 @nprofile…93ny I'm hearing activitypub-over-smtp tunnel (do not actually do this, oh no, now that I've spoken it aloud someone might actually manifest it)

2025-01-21 01:10:08 UTC

Because of reasons, my Netflix account is bound to my friend Rhys' house. At my house the account is my friend Clayton's. Clayton's house is using Bob's account. None of us are willing to fix this musical chairs situation because of how frustrating the re-auth/location binding process is.

2025-01-20 16:17:16 UTC

What Fucking Street Is This: the Google Maps Story
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/861/578/748/033/686/original/e3a354a5f454dc9f.png

2025-01-19 19:29:11 UTC

Tired of those boring, inert genders like He and Xe but not ready for a post-transition identity? Try a short-lived, exciting f-block gender like Th or Ac!

2025-01-19 17:08:56 UTC

Can confirm--you have to open a ticket with Google support to disable the new Gemini LLM garbage Google shoved into Gmail, Drive, etc, for Workspace. <sigh>
https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuite/comments/1i3lo46/how_to_turn_off_gemini_for_workspace_the_real_deal/
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/856/114/958/136/777/original/2cda502e2b42e827.png

2025-01-16 20:19:15 UTC

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Even if we were to somehow do age verification, take the site private, and block all federation, I suspect some of our content could fall afoul of the "extreme pornography" provisions of the OSA, which doubles down on Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
I am reminded, yet again, of the Spanner trials: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16803763/

2025-01-16 20:07:25 UTC

I wrote to Ofcom last week asking for guidance for Mastodon instances like woof.group, as the #OnlineSafetyAct comes into effect in March. There's a lot of respects in which we're likely to run afoul of the act, but one of the big ones is that Ofcom's response letter repeatedly explained that any service which allows pornography must perform "highly effective age assurance".
I've written back to ask for clarification, but... I don't see how it's possible to comply here.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/consultations/category-1-10-weeks/statement-age-assurance-and-childrens-access/statement-age-assurance-and-childrens-access.pdf?v=388849#page=15?v=388849
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/825/685/664/255/original/d42293611a9ae91a.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/826/154/575/051/original/26227ada7269a225.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/826/807/452/178/original/ffd7c2850e757b94.png

2025-01-15 15:30:16 UTC

C type signatures are absolutely psychotic. No wonder people are so excited about Rust.

2025-01-10 23:50:17 UTC

nothing like trying to solve basic tasks like "open a large file and write some bytes" in C to remind me just how much I appreciate languages with "predictable integer sizes" and "platform-independent IO libraries"

2024-12-28 16:08:17 UTC

If carcinization is transforming into a crab, ostracization should be transforming into an ostrich

2024-12-25 19:01:03 UTC

just discovered the JS Date constructor uses zero-indexed months but one-indexed days, what on fucking EARTH
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/Date#monthindex

2024-12-23 16:53:46 UTC

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@nprofile…andh Knowing fuck-all about this space, that seems like a solid idea. Requiring the owners to have "skin in the game", so to speak.

2024-12-23 16:50:20 UTC

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I'd love to say there's a simple policy change here that would fix the hole in their balance sheet, like "stop paying CEOs ridiculous salaries". But looking at their financial statements, they were facing consistent net losses of on the order of a hundred million dollars per year. That's ~10x larger than the total annual compensation of all named executives. I'm not a business expert, huge grains of salt and all, just seems like a tough problem.
https://investor.containerstore.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2024/The-Container-Store-Group-Inc.-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Fiscal-Year-2023-Financial-Results/default.aspx
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1411688/000104746915005487/a2225095zdef14a.htm#Executive_and_Director_Compensation

2024-12-23 16:44:12 UTC

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241222725949/en/The-Container-Store-to-Execute-Comprehensive-Recapitalization-Transaction-with-Lender-Support-to-Best-Position-the-Company-for-Future-Success
I keep thinking about PE takeovers and how they invariably seem to fuck over everyone in search of profitability. But I'm not sure what the alternative space is here--Container Store ran out of money. It could shut down, which puts all its employees out of work, and puts pressure on suppliers, which might hurt workers there too. Does this sort of bankruptcy + recapitalization offer a softer landing for workers? I dunno. :-/

2024-12-18 06:29:27 UTC

Me IRL: the absolute most basic bitch of gym bros, doing the least at all times
Me in video games: spending hours in the character creator trying to find the perfect metallic lip, going to every boutique downtown to find a dress that complements it, giving zero fucks that I have much better armor in my closet at home because it's FAHsion, DAHling
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/672/409/375/040/327/original/a786484a2e2ea9a6.jpg

2024-12-14 06:10:12 UTC

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@nprofile…asy0 on the plus side, now they can pivot the domain to findom services 😆

2024-12-13 17:02:35 UTC

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Scrubbed through my ride videos this week and got two cyclists running reds. It happens! It's not great IMO!
OTOH, in that same set of rides I have three cars running reds or stop signs, ten parked in bike lanes, a half dozen unsignaled lane changes, four stopped or parked directly over crosswalks, four on their phones while driving...

2024-12-13 17:00:45 UTC

I have this theory that part of why car drivers rant about cyclists and don't seem to realize how often cars break the law is because when you're in a car you don't actually get to *see* that many cars. You spend most of an urban drive waiting behind other cars. On a bike you're constantly passing them and have lots of chances to see car fuckery.

2024-12-10 22:18:13 UTC

Eleanor Zigbee /
Turns on the lights in a room where nobody wants them /
Mistaken scene /
Based on a message /
Sent by the press of a button six hours before /
Who was it fooooor?
#HomeAssistant

2024-12-03 17:30:39 UTC

I don't know who needs to hear this but
you can add little a panko toasted in garlic & butter to whatever you're making
as a treat

2024-12-02 16:13:47 UTC

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@nprofile…0n93 (it's me, I was the Fighting the Man type 😛)

2024-12-02 16:04:03 UTC

The other thing I want to say, apropos of the last eight years of Fedi admin kerfuffles, is that moderating an instance of even a few hundred people can confront you with incredibly thorny and difficult-to-predict situations. People you've never heard of will call each other abusers, threaten legal action against each other and the instance. They'll ask you to read lengthy screenshots of text messages, police reports, EMS reports. You may be asked to get involved in stories of CSA and self-harm.

2024-12-02 15:46:50 UTC

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Those actors fall in the long tail of the heterogenous threat landscape. The bulk--other users on instances that generally play by the rules--is more subtle.
Fedi has no built-in global search, and lots of people disable external indexing. Broken conversation chains and missing replies are common. You can, if you like, block your own moderators (!) and make their job incredibly frustrating. Approving followers and using followers-only posts do *something* to limit visibility.
It's complicated!

2024-12-02 15:44:07 UTC

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At the same time, people are generally boring, admins are generally ethical, and snooping takes *work*. I've dug into the database to look at DMs once (?) in five years, and that was at the specific user's request. I've also been inside the surveillance capitalism sausage factory: corporate snooping is both far more invasive than most people realize, and also *ridiculously* lossy/noisy. We don't have the resources to fight a subpoena, but also no government has *bothered* to ask for our data.

2024-12-02 15:30:37 UTC

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I don't know how to effectively communicate, let alone acculturate, realistic models of privacy here. Yes, your moderators can see your email address. The admins of your instance and every receiver's instance can read your DMs. Yes, the entire world can, if they like, view your public posts. It is very likely that those posts have been indexed by governments, researchers, ADHD gay hyenas (non-derogatory), and trolls (derogatory). Blocks are advisory. Authorized_fetch is a gate with no lock.

2024-12-02 15:07:32 UTC

In the early aughts I was a a self-described paranoid cypherpunk. I was obsessed with privacy: running Tor, trying to convince all my friends to sign each other's GPG keys so we could build a web of trust, and booting Trinux from a floppy so I could tunnel my Very Important HTTP traffic over SSH where The Authorities (TM) couldn't read it.
None of that prepared me for the experience of being a moderator on Fedi, and the myriad privacy headcanons people construct.

2024-12-01 22:34:36 UTC

"Despite the fact that Threads users can’t follow or see mentions from people on other instances, Threads has already opted to block a slew of instances where gay & leather people congregate.... If Threads were a taxi service, it wouldn’t take you South of Market."
https://aphyr.com/posts/371-threads-wont-take-you-south-of-market

2024-11-26 22:05:23 UTC

People talk a lot about "functional core, imperative shell", but the inverse--a pure functional shell around a demon core of packed array data and primitive bitwise magic--is actually pretty great. Write your generative tests in the functional landscape, validate that the imperative evil thing works correctly, then seal it away behind a functional API.

2024-11-24 16:56:08 UTC

@nprofile…asy0 out of curiosity--I know video is way more expensive to host and serve, so... what's your financial plan for loops? Are you gonna cover server costs out of pocket? Cap signups on the main server?

2024-09-10 21:35:08 UTC

Oh no https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/113113873983758374

2024-08-13 18:20:59 UTC

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if you release a .deb that installs cleanly on stock debian stable I will kiss you sweetly while whispering words of affirmation into your ears

2024-08-13 18:18:58 UTC

I am begging software projects to release programs as tarballs or plain old static binaries. I don't know what a Helm chart is. I am not installing an entire Kubernetes cluster. Docker breaks LXC and firewalls and is constantly breaking for mysterious reasons. I would rather submit myself to hours of `./configure && make && make install` frustration than try to hack through the endless hellscape of containerized deployment systems.

2024-06-29 02:47:58 UTC

Hotel lighting continues to hit different
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/112/697/623/884/438/999/original/93a6121824902df4.jpg

2024-06-26 16:13:31 UTC

I love that reviewers get mad about Blizzard adding gay characters to Overwatch as if every single Overwatch character were not already gay