calcifer @calcifer@hackers.town

Hello H.T

I've recently arrived from the Bauhaus, because you all have built a pretty sweet community here

I'm old, I'm all over the place, I get nerd-sniped on the regular, and I'm very enthusiastic about tech ethics

I like to fiddle with embedded stuff, particularly making stuff out of Arduino and LED pixels. I get cranky when "modern" means "we added complexity for no real reason". I think tech should aim for legibility and serve as a human enhancer; I get cranky when it's used to control or oppress or replace humans

I have no patience for stupid tech holy wars -- all hardware sucks, all software sucks, the documentation is provably incorrect, and the vendors all tell lies

I'm a dad -- so there will be dad jokes. I'm queer and polyam -- so there will occasionally be venting about that. I'm a nerd -- so there will be references and in-jokes aplenty

20% faster NVMe SSD in the pinebook pro also means faster swap, which is lovely when I actually have to fire up a mainstream browser for something

So it turns out getting adequate exercise is pretty hard to do when you have significant lifting restrictions and a back/hip combo injury. Who'd have thought? ^/s

Thank goodness my ebike has higher levels of pedal assist or I'd also be losing one of the few warm-weather activities that bring me joy. I may not be getting enough exercise from it, but being outside and moving is still good for my mental health

If you learn about a programming paradigm and conclude that you’re just going to do everything in that paradigm from now on, you’re being foolish

There is not, and likely will never be, one best paradigm. Each has strengths, and each is suited to particular problems and particular ways of thinking. The point is to use the one that best fits the situation at hand; you can even mix them! (Though please spare a thought for maintainers and be considerate about how you do so)

3-2-1 backup strategy is:

Three backups, on at least two distinct devices, at least one which is off-site

As more people have their primary backup in the cloud, I’d like to adjust that last one. The spirit is that you should have one copy to hand and one outside your usual work areas. Keep a local copy and a cloud copy if possible; if not, 2 cloud providers can work, but make sure they don’t share common points of failure (eg both backed by AWS or fronted by the same CDN)

Fuck, I’m going to end up making a static site generator aren’t I?

Just once I’d like to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather without everyone and their grandpa deciding “welp, nice day, guess I should mow the lawn and run the tiller”

It’s insane that I can get 1TB of quality flash storage for <$0.08/GB though.

Just added 1TB of NVMe SSDto my Pinebook Pro. A couple things I learned:

It’s a pain in the ass to have /usr on a partition other than / in Manjaro ARM. After reading about what’s involved, I said “fuck it”

Some NVMe storage does not like it when you tell it what power settings to use

Manjaro (or possibly the firmware) has some issues with soft reboots properly initializing the NVMe; I soft-reboot rarely enough that I’m going to forget and WTF all over again

You’re not a bad person for buying something from Amazon or Walmart, even though those are awful companies

You’re not “supporting evil” by using GitHub or Gmail, even though it enriches MS and Google

You’re not awful for streaming a Harry Potter movie, even though JKR is a bigoted turd

Sure, if you have better options, I encourage you to use them. I’ll even recommend some! But you’re not bad; you’re not “supporting” the bad things those people and orgs do; you’re just trying to live through this plutocratic hellscape

This whole thing around shaming people for “supporting ” because they bought a product or service is actually kind of shitty

There’s nothing wrong with the line of thought that goes: if I’m going to spend money on something, I’d prefer to spend it with the least objectionable people. It’s awesome when someone loses business because they behave badly

But shaming or anger directed at people who weigh that differently is controlling and awful. People need things (including art and entertainment!); very often, meeting those needs means dealing with people/orgs they’d rather not.

“You must be informed!” has become something of a cultish article of faith

Yes, there are things about which it is wise to stay informed. It is not necessary to be informed about everything the media wants to report to you. I promise it is ok to have filters and to take breaks. Almost nothing important, aside from true emergencies, requires you to know the moment it happens

For anyone who might not know:

CW: flashing images, janky animation

https://youtu.be/KmNfPkdCRf8

Me: are tigers orange and black or black and orange?
My kid, y'all: "Pikachus are yellow and black… and rectangular, yes"

She's TWELVE. I win.

One of the devs on an adjacent team that I'm semi-mentoring has been advocating for the whole "Cloud IDE" thing. Which, ok fine whatever.

But I've been challenging him to defend his idea a bit to get used to how to make technical / business case arguments -- which always involves "why can't we just use this thing that's free/we already pay for?"

So he said "but you can work on code without having it on a local machine!" and I replied with "ok, but how is that better than like ssh, screen, and vim? And he didn't know what I meant, so I showed him how I ssh in and edit code on a remote machine.

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That thing people do where we jump from "I have made a reasonable inference" to "this is the truth of the matter" is endlessly fascinating.

I know a lot about how and why it happens. Do I still do it? Absolutely.

I don't think it's getting enough attention that the practical outcomes of nearly every recent shitty SCOTUS decision could be substantially fixed with legislation

If we can't rely on a sensible interpretation of the Constitution, we can absolutely push our representatives to codify important protections

I never really fit in with the various ERGs any place I've ever worked. Like, I see that they're valuable to a lot of people, but I just don't seem to know how to participate

In the LGBTQ+ one at my current work, people just seem to talk about going to queer-centered events or share topical news items. And I just… that's not something I see a lot of value in doing at work? So I just sort of lurk in the calls and on the Slack, but I worry people think ill of me for not being more involved

I want to see an established scifi property do a series that functions like an anthology of "miniseries" type stories.

Give me, for example, "Star Trek Galaxy"; each "season" is 5-ish episodes that each track a story arc for one ship/mission somewhere. Each arc has the freedom to stand alone. Avoid cameos. Avoid recurring characters between seasons. Just tell me a tight story that enriches the universe.