Nostr notes by josch

For now, I will no longer be uploading to the #Debian NEW queue. ...

2026-10-26T14:02:56Z

For now, I will no longer be uploading to the #Debian NEW queue.

And yes, I will now go outside and do something nice instead of trying to argue on mailing lists about #LLM use in #FOSS. Maybe do the same. The weather is great outside. :)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/10/msg00263.html

Hrm... #NetBSD #MNT Pocket Reform ...

2026-10-16T09:50:25Z

Hrm... #NetBSD #MNT Pocket Reform

The new semester started and this year I have added nine slides ...

2026-10-14T00:39:59Z

The new semester started and this year I have added nine slides for my intro lecture in C++ about the use of LLMs when trying to get better at programming.

It's not on the slides but I may have mentioned the thing with fascist billionaires and pollution of our planet in my verbal commentary on the topic.

No ALT text for the attached PNG renderings of the slides. The text in the images is the text of the post itself.

And the statistical likelihood of word order is not tuned to give ...

2026-10-05T13:19:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…zqsy
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And the statistical likelihood of word order is not tuned to give the reader the maximum amount of "truth" (there is no concept of truth in the neural network) but such that the reader is most happy or satisfied with the answer. I hear people saying "the AI knows everything" and of course that's always about topics they know little about. This works because the LLM is very good at writing a convincing text which makes the reader believe that what they read is "true".

Wait... With the #fish shell I get command completion for local ...

2026-10-03T06:57:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…n9uh
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Wait... With the #fish shell I get command completion for local python scripts in a git repo with no setup at all? And I even get the help text I wrote in python argparse? What is this magic??

And did I mention that #fish has a no-#llm policy? ...

2026-10-03T06:31:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…n9uh
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And did I mention that #fish has a no-#llm policy? https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst#ai-contributions-policy

(sadly something I found myself checking for every new project I consider starting to make part of my regular workflow...)

If you haven't tried the #fish #shell yet, maybe give it a ...

2026-10-03T06:29:45Z

If you haven't tried the #fish #shell yet, maybe give it a try. I spent *a lot* of effort to configure #zsh with automatic command completion, fuzzy history search, git integration, completion suggestions and so on (even configured #atuin). But since I now switched to another computer (RK3588 #MNT Reform) I just apt get installed fish on this new setup and I'm a bit puzzled because it seems that it does everything i want — out of the box? Zero configuration? Wow 😍

https://fishshell.com/

Do it. You already told us about it. :D

2026-09-14T07:29:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…d5u8
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Do it. You already told us about it. :D

I'm happy that you/MNT represent the position you do. Makes ...

2026-08-25T21:08:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…f2pf
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I'm happy that you/MNT represent the position you do. Makes me think about it like a safe space where I don't have to bother about this crap... 👍

You have to tell me your secret. During the first days of the ...

2026-08-25T21:02:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…227y
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You have to tell me your secret. During the first days of the Debian LLM debate on the mailing lists I couldn't sleep nor eat properly...

Whoops, did I accidentally @-mention you? I tried not to to not ...

2026-08-25T20:56:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…e0ff
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Whoops, did I accidentally @-mention you? I tried not to to not make your day worse...

Answering your original question: I would be reviewing your MR ...

2026-08-25T20:50:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…ffv2
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Answering your original question: I would be reviewing your MR even if it were created with assistance of an LLM.

What I am concerned about is Lucie who is wasting way too much time already because of residential scrapers DDoS-ing source.mnt.re regularly. Also see this for a clear position on the topic: https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/116168236866690617
nostr:note1d3k444dx02lyx7hran02ws53tk3he9y84tf3z3sx52ckq55vexusv9m4xd

Oh? When I had a peek there only seemed to be four patches that ...

2026-08-25T20:21:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…ht56
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Oh? When I had a peek there only seemed to be four patches that don't apply cleanly. Why the LLM assistance? Do we actually save time?

Also, you are aware that we are switching how the MNT patches are being distributed?

https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-debian-packages/-/merge_requests/195

I'm not the one to decide about your question but Lucie. Though I can also imagine that it will make their day worse when you suggest that. Just today, Lucie complained about sashiko in IRC.

Wow, crazy. I'm volunteering for Greenpeace for over 10 ...

2026-08-19T20:17:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…pugj
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Wow, crazy. I'm volunteering for Greenpeace for over 10 years, so when we lobby for all kind of sustainability-related stuff in our city (and elsewhere) we hear all sorts of shit from people but I never met somebody with this kind of argument. WTF...

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/116168236866690617 This. ...

2026-07-05T17:56:33Z

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/116168236866690617

This. Don't let them tell you that the end-goal is to write as many lines of code per day as possible. The end goal is you, your enjoyment of the craft and the connection to other people that you make through it. Improve yourself and help others to do the same.
nostr:note1d3k444dx02lyx7hran02ws53tk3he9y84tf3z3sx52ckq55vexusv9m4xd

I got this too last Sunday. I was so happy, I nearly replied to ...

2026-06-12T23:30:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…qfut
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I got this too last Sunday. I was so happy, I nearly replied to the spammer. The spam reads:
> mister-muffin.de: invisible to ChatGPT and Claude
> ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can't read your content:
> A SaaS we audited in April had the same gaps. After adding 3 files: 0 → 1,200 AI-driven visits/week. That's a third of their fresh traffic now.
> P.S. Cloudflare made the test public (isitagentready.com) — your competitors are already on it.

Too bad it was only spam... :(

I think that's why rubber ducking works. It also happens to ...

2026-05-30T18:15:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…v2tz
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I think that's why rubber ducking works. It also happens to me frequently that once I start to write down the problem in a way which makes somebody else understand the problem, once I write exactly what commands I ran and their interesting output, once I create the tables and diffs comparing output in different scenarios, this kind of structured approach to a problem I have will solve a lot of my problems without me having to press the "submit issue" button. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Nooooo! Think of all the things you could still maybe possibly ...

2026-05-28T19:26:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…h4rx
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Nooooo! Think of all the things you could still maybe possibly have done with it! Think of the endless possibilities! :D
Me having tons of half-usb-cables in a box at home I salute you for being able to take such drastic measures. 👍

Next step for the #MNT Reform Keyboard 4.0 trackstick mod: The ...

2026-05-13T21:46:25Z

Next step for the #MNT Reform Keyboard 4.0 trackstick mod: The Sprintek SK8707-01-005 works well with a RP2040 flashed with QMK. Thanks to gordon (npub1pnw…4eeq) I found the magic patch which made it work very smoothly. Link to that patch and my full diff to QMK here: https://github.com/josch/qmk_firmware/commit/56d908063fc2641c6257c13ad23b8f072cb37579

I think that would be physically possible but it would not be ...

2026-05-08T13:40:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…4e4q
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I think that would be physically possible but it would not be something that I'd be interested in working on. I would like to have the trackstick at the home-row of the keyboard like in old IBM thinkpads. :)

Yes, midfavila mentioned it last night and potatoes immediately ...

2026-05-08T09:17:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…cxjc
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Yes, midfavila mentioned it last night and potatoes immediately pinged me about it. I have the Sprintek SK8707-01-005 here and just ordered another RP2040 which i want to flash with QMK to attach it to the Reform via USB. The bloopy bean uses a hall effect sensor with a magnet above it held by a 3D printed "spiral". We are very space constrained and even the Sprintek stem barely fits between the keyboard keys. Right now, I cannot think of a way of how to combine the bloopy with the kb.

My RK3588 #MNT classic Reform just arrived back from repair. As ...

2026-04-16T19:27:43Z

My RK3588 #MNT classic Reform just arrived back from repair. As usual, their shipping box fits perfectly into an Eurobox. Very satisfying! Even more satisfying was what I found inside the box: this looks like new or can you spot that anything got replaced after I fried my LTC chip? Even my poor soldering of D30 seems to have been magically fixed up? And there is a new WiFi antenna! Thank you so much for your work wakest ⁂ (npub1xse…lgk3) ♥️ I hope I'm not missing any of the things you fixed up with my machine?

This is very impressive! Crazy that you are able to fix the ...

2026-03-25T21:20:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…5v7q
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This is very impressive! Crazy that you are able to fix the position of a component like that!

Sorry for being one of those who have derailed this thread from ...

2026-02-26T16:07:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…ssd5
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Sorry for being one of those who have derailed this thread from the actual topic you wanted to talk about 😬

non-US datapoint: totally normal over here in Europe. Nobody ...

2026-02-26T06:26:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…5w8g
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non-US datapoint: totally normal over here in Europe. Nobody blinks an eye. Most common non-local language to have such meetings in is... English :)

Text console still works. This includes single user mode.

2025-10-17T13:35:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…n5tq
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Text console still works. This includes single user mode.

What is libgtop under gnome is called "solid" in kde. ...

2025-09-07T17:16:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…ma7y
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What is libgtop under gnome is called "solid" in kde. Even without kde installed (i'm running sway on a311d classic reform) I can install the debian package libkf6solid-bin and it will show me a lot of details about the hardware in my system including the information that my processor consists of two 'ARM Cortex-A53' with 1.8 GHz and four 'ARM Cortex-A73' with 2.2 GHz max. This information is not present in /proc/cpuinfo and i wish gnome would give me a similar amount of detail.

No, this is more involved. On ARM, /proc/cpuinfo does not tell ...

2025-09-07T17:00:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…nyn4
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No, this is more involved. On ARM, /proc/cpuinfo does *not* tell you that the CPU is a Cortex A55 or A76 like in this case. This is how it looks like instead: https://paste.debian.net/hidden/94142b6c So more magic needs to happen. For gnome, libgtop is responsible to provide this information and there is a 3 year old bug about this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgtop/-/issues/66 as well for gnome-control-center which is supposed to show this information: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/2069

Spontaneous meet-up of :debian: Debian Developers owning a ...

2025-08-03T11:40:50Z

Spontaneous meet-up of :debian: Debian Developers owning a Lucie / minute (npub1sl7…lnx3) MNT Reform open hardware laptop in a small cafe in Munich. The photo shows two classic MNT Reform with A311D, one classic Reform with i.MX8MQ and a MNT Pocket Reform with RK3588. #debian

Explained to my 4-year-old daughter how electricity works. I ...

2025-07-13T08:17:54Z

Explained to my 4-year-old daughter how electricity works. I asked her the name of the "+" symbol on the battery. Her answer: "That's where they hung Jesus." Unfortunately there are only christian kindergartens in Bavaria but it makes me really angry that this is what they teach them. They think of torture and murder instead of math when they see a "+" symbol and I should not have to spend the time and effort of trying to counteract what they teach...

I'm currently updating the images and repository on ...

2025-05-21T13:12:18Z

I'm currently updating the images and repository on https://reform.debian.net for the upcoming Debian Trixie release. Thanks to the insane generosity of wickedshell (npub1flk…k4at) I can now test this on a RK3588 Lucie / minute (npub1sl7…lnx3) MNT Pocket Reform myself. And you know what? It just works. Out of the box. This platform has truly come a long way. It feels very mature and I believe it is a device that I can truly recommend to fellow GNU/Linux users. This not just a machine to tinker. This is a reliable daily driver.

@npub1pus…aagp Ah yes indeed. I watched the talk by ...

2025-05-19T11:35:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…66fa
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LINux on MOBile (npub1pus…aagp) Ah yes indeed. I watched the talk by devrtz :debian: (npub13a8…am5l) at minidebconf hamburg yesterday and I think I saw that for the PP you need to set { box-shadow: none; } in ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css as a workaround.
For the other platforms there are good news: Timo Aaltonen merged the etnaviv texelfetch support by Christian Gmeiner (npub1n6z…v2dl) into mesa for Trixie with the upload of mesa 25.0.5-2 just now 🥳

@npub1tn0…ckq0 just announced the first release candidate of ...

2025-05-17T03:35:58Z

Cyril Brulebois (npub1tn0…ckq0) just announced the first release candidate of the Debian Installer for Debian 13 "Trixie". 🥳 https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2025/05/msg00003.html
Thanks to Vagrant Cascadian (npub16qz…mdzw) it includes flash-kernel support for the Lucie / minute (npub1sl7…lnx3) MNT Reform 2 with RCORE RK3588 Module.
You still need a kernel with the RK3588 patch stack by Collabora (npub1hpq…n5tk) but at least you don't need to patch flash-kernel anymore. 😀

Or maybe you have better connections to the mesa maintainers in ...

2025-05-15T17:45:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…tpek
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Or maybe you have better connections to the mesa maintainers in Debian than I and let them have a look at https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1104029

Oh no, I'm sorry this is my fault. I typo-ed ...

2025-04-29T11:54:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…k3vf
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Oh no, I'm sorry this is my fault. I typo-ed MESA_GLES_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2 in my bug report! Mea culpa! I can see now in my shell history that I never used the other variable on my imx8mq Reform... Sorry for the trouble! I'm going to update the bug report...

Huh... maybe I'm blind but I only see the "extra" ...

2025-04-29T07:48:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…3wyf
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Huh... maybe I'm blind but I only see the "extra" error after you have installed mesa-vulkan-drivers but not the error you get just with the patch.

Can you share the error message with ...

2025-04-29T04:48:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…s7vg
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Can you share the error message with MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2? For me it showed MESA: error: Unhandled NIR tex type: 4 and that triggered the implementation by Christian Gmeiner. Maybe Christian Gmeiner (npub1n6z…v2dl) can help you with gtk4.18 on the librem5 as well?

Uh good point, the librem 5 with imx8mq is of course also ...

2025-04-28T23:21:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…svj9
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Uh good point, the librem 5 with imx8mq is of course also affected... Does somebody maybe have better connection to the Debian mesa maintainers than I? :)

Purple Reform Next running Factorio? The factory of open hardware ...

2024-12-27T22:24:24Z

Purple Reform Next running Factorio? The factory of open hardware laptops must grow! 🏭 :openhardware:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

Yeah, I was also thinking about a CD player but then burning CDs ...

2024-10-16T15:36:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…rgx2
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Yeah, I was also thinking about a CD player but then burning CDs is kinda wasteful compared to just flashing an SD-card or USB stick. Cassette sounds like a nice idea though.

To your last point: my daughter (3) already knows how to remove and re-attach the back plate of my reform (all 10 screws by herself) so they can do surprising things if you teach them early. :)

Dear fediparents, can you recommend a device for children to ...

2024-10-16T10:59:47Z

Dear fediparents, can you recommend a device for children to entertain themselves with audio/music it plays? Anything with a closed-source ecosystem based on DRM or tracking is a no-go.

In search for a solution I stumbled across https://en.hoerbert.com/ which seems to tick all my boxes except that it's not open hardware and its ESP32 firmware is propr. as well. But they publish schematics as CC-BY and sell DIY kits. The Qt client is GPL on github and supports linux.

Other ideas? Boosts welcome!

I know I'm late, but only recently I read ...

2024-09-13T10:22:27Z

I know I'm late, but only recently I read https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/ and today I finally migrated my gitea instance at gitlab.mister-muffin.de (the subdomain name tells you where I'm coming from) to #Forgejo. Luckily my gitea installation was still at v1.21 and thus migrating from gitea to forgejo was as simple as switching out the gitea binary for the forgejo binary. It was literally only that. Thank you Forgejo (npub12r3…zz58)!

Debian is providing funding for an MNT Reform with RK3588 so that ...

2024-08-29T13:23:33Z

Debian is providing funding for an MNT Reform with RK3588 so that I can improve Debian support on that platform and can provide long term stable support for it for Trixie and beyond. Thank you for this opportunity!

For full transparency, my funding request for Debian sponsorship can be found as PDF here:

https://mister-muffin.de/reform/funding-application.pdf

Or here in HTML form:

https://mister-muffin.de/reform/funding-application.html