Howard Chu @ Symas

CTO Symas Corp., Chief Architect OpenLDAP Project, Musician

Public Key

npub1tt4j2zeswksjh5z7zmy283qd4yd920afy9j28xg45wsxzhl9rpjqrex9ud

NIP-05 Address

hyc@mastodon-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs946e9pvc8tgft6p0pdj9rcsx6jxj4875jze9rny268grptlj3seqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qaqnksn

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

Author Public Key

npub1tt4j2zeswksjh5z7zmy283qd4yd920afy9j28xg45wsxzhl9rpjqrex9ud

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Last Notes

2026-03-30 13:18:50 UTC

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@nprofile…2d25 bonus points - have each student randomly swap their code with another student. Nobody gets to run their own, everyone must debug someone else's.

2026-03-04 17:27:55 UTC

Hey interwebz, anyone know what kind of bug this is? It's the spec above the CR2032 battery package (shown for scale). It was crawling across my table before I smushed it.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/172/061/376/553/819/original/191e8db717a574fd.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/172/074/587/813/718/original/67b51caa6a080ea6.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/172/075/200/767/822/original/1cee929420a02cba.jpg

2026-03-02 23:18:13 UTC

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@nprofile…2wsh @nprofile…hh4j he probably doesn't dictate exact methods but I'm sure he encouraged US actions which would trigger counterattacks that would leave the US weakened

2026-03-02 21:04:01 UTC

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@nprofile…hh4j russia planned all of this

2026-01-23 21:08:09 UTC

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@nprofile…lanw what did you get? I'm thinking of finding something to replace my Lichee Pi 4a, that implements RVV1.0 instead of the RVV0.7 this thing has.

2025-11-23 19:41:06 UTC

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@nprofile…jljv of course the Supreme Ct did that. Scum....

2025-11-01 19:49:21 UTC

Symas contributes to development of @nprofile…dg3c . I personally don't endorse Signal; their idiotic MobileCoin venture made it clear their priority is profit, not user safety.
You actually *can* get secure private messaging without relying on centralized metadata storage or AWS.
https://fosstodon.org/@cwtch/115464360100095502

2025-08-03 21:52:44 UTC

A new engineer discovers how Cloudflare used #LMDB for their distributed config https://xcancel.com/UltraSive/status/1948967694004326605#m
"99th %ile of reads dropped by two orders of magnitude!"
"LMDB stability has been exceptional. It has been running in production for over three years. We have experienced only a single bug and zero data corruption. Considering we serve over 2.5 trillion read requests and 30 million write requests a day on over 90,000 database instances across thousands of servers, this is very impressive."

2025-06-29 08:59:13 UTC

BoltDB is an #LMDB clone written in #golang but apparently a lot of performance was lost in the translation. This project reporting a 40% gain in throughput by switching from BoltDB to LMDB https://xcancel.com/virelprotocol/status/1938953969637765532#m

2025-03-20 20:53:29 UTC

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@nprofile…vdm6 why is all this reporting only saying "this agency is cutting that" - individual people make these decisions. Not "agencies". Name the people making these decisions.

2025-03-20 15:38:12 UTC

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@nprofile…kyj5 since they have 0 posts, what harm are they doing?

2025-03-19 17:27:59 UTC

Yes, I recommend all our competitors just use #postgres; makes it trivial to blow them away in competitive benchmarking... #lmdb #openldap
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/190/257/140/675/198/original/eaafceabc6b76270.jpg

2025-02-26 10:17:31 UTC

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@nprofile…ffls sounds like they've done some concerted effort on performance there. But without detailed profiling, there's no reason to expect that this is the end of the story for any of those implementations. When I worked on compressors back in the 1980s I found all kinds of tricks to boost their perf. I suspect I could do the same here.

2025-02-16 09:07:33 UTC

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@nprofile…32kp Please can we use modern build tools like cmake, ninja, etc etc
Hell no. Plain `make` does the job easily for 90% of projects. Rtfm and learn how to use it before you go pushing for the latest flavor of the month.
Joining an existing project requires learning how it already works. You don't get to just jump in and imnediately request every current developer change all of their established procedures to accommodate you. That won't fly, anywhere in the world.

2025-01-14 12:37:06 UTC

New for OpenLDAP 3.0 - forget about bothersome index configuration. Just feed your entire DB into chatGPT. Search queries will be answered immediately by #AI, without maintaining any indices.

2024-12-19 17:37:39 UTC

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@nprofile…08j0 @nprofile…tg6x easy enough to convert that to HDMI for a modern display. I just found this on AliExpress:
€8.44 | 1080P AV Svideo to HDMI-compatible Video Converter RCA to HDMI-Compatible Adapter Cable For DVD HD TV STB Compatble With PS2/PS3
https://a.aliexpress.com/_EwZNKMk

2024-12-19 17:36:11 UTC

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@nprofile…08j0 @nprofile…tg6x older C64 just had composite video out, later upgraded to also have Y/C which can be fed into an S-Video cable. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/A/V_Jack

2024-12-19 17:29:06 UTC

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@nprofile…tg6x @nprofile…08j0 I love the combo of ancient computer with modern flat-screen monitors. Sleek!

2024-12-18 17:17:26 UTC

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Disinfo is forever https://mastodon.social/@susankayequinn@wandering.shop/113674837585021616

2024-12-11 23:54:55 UTC

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@nprofile…3ruv @nprofile…ffc0 @nprofile…p0z2 hey, my beard wasn't grey yet when I started writing LMDB.

2024-11-18 06:07:20 UTC

It's not a "smart" appliance if it only works while connected to a 3rd party's remote server, and can be knocked out of commission by a WAN outage. Smart appliances should only communicate with your LAN. https://mastodon.social/@augieray/113501696022120792

2024-09-28 18:56:58 UTC

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@npub1wnv…899h Ah yes, typical "facebook engineering" ...

2024-09-20 23:17:45 UTC

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@npub1ekx…puy8 and he's the runt!

2024-09-20 22:52:59 UTC

Hudson on his favorite perch #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/172/331/732/089/200/original/2a4dec82bb65c529.mp4

2024-09-17 19:24:26 UTC

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@npub1alm…57vz for $150M you could just make it free. For everyone.

2024-09-16 23:39:17 UTC

From a freshly opened pack these cookies are hard and dry as a brick. I have a theory that they're made that way because the air is so humid in these isles that within hours of exposure the cookies soften up and actually get a bit chewy.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/149/867/164/332/774/original/8589b3b120930524.jpg

2024-09-11 17:46:28 UTC

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and yes, I would otherwise have gotten up but no, I didn't move until Hudson woke up himself.

2024-09-11 07:14:34 UTC

Good morning #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/117/683/381/095/984/original/eee0ca9151860464.jpg

2024-09-10 18:12:17 UTC

Quick reminder - any docs you've found for #OpenLDAP online anywhere besides openldap.org were probably written by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Stop using web search to find information that's already included in the official docs bundled with the release and already installed on your local machine. Especially with AIs producing garbage answers these days, you're just wasting your time.
https://bugs.openldap.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10256#c3

2024-09-08 20:00:27 UTC

if you fry dumplings in a non-stick pan are they technically still pot-stickers?

2024-08-27 18:18:58 UTC

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@npub14cw…hfwc or never, in this case. https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/23616

2024-08-08 19:03:37 UTC

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@npub16r0…z5pl If the price *does* double, that's only enough to keep the currently running miners operating. But the network is then twice as valuable as before, making it more worthwhile to attack it, meanwhile the amount of hashrate protecting the network has only held steady.

2024-08-08 16:17:44 UTC

Bitcoin is for people who failed at math...
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/927/297/946/430/793/original/d9f940b678f43400.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/927/300/071/005/296/original/3f71cbbdf5c0192f.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/927/300/629/207/011/original/8c6c9bbe570bc5fe.png

2024-08-04 20:02:01 UTC

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@npub1cy3…j872
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/905/533/439/199/081/original/5834d35df716ce30.jpg

2024-08-04 19:59:22 UTC

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@npub1cy3…j872
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/905/522/706/518/631/original/0c20896d8b179d14.jpg

2024-08-02 22:15:11 UTC

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@npub1a56…jgz2 y'know, "virgin Mary" is mostly a mis-translation, right? The original word only meant something like "married for less than a year" ...

2024-08-02 19:49:32 UTC

Funny thing about "embarrassingly outdated appeal to binaristic gender norms" - every person alive today, and who has ever lived, had 1 male and 1 female parent. That's the norm, yes.

2024-08-02 03:16:28 UTC

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@npub1ua7…rrg3 if you only have file libXX.so.0 then you don't have the -dev package installed. The linker only recognizes .o, .a, and .so suffixes. You need to symlink libSDL2-2.0.so.0 to libSDL2-2.0.so for ld to see it.

2024-08-01 00:01:38 UTC

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@npub13le…6saf reminds me of my Atari 1020 color plotter. Was it the same under the skin?

2024-07-31 17:37:16 UTC

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@npub1g2d…l2nh F16 is a great plane, but it's from 1976, basically 50 years old. What do people really expect from this?

2024-07-31 03:16:30 UTC

I guess Facebook/Meta is hiring programmers without Unix experience these days.
https://bugs.openldap.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10245

2024-07-31 02:44:48 UTC

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@npub1f05…grer lemme dig up my Jaguar64 devkit...

2024-07-30 03:11:52 UTC

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@npub19u5…3n6l rust implementors are unserious

2024-07-29 18:53:38 UTC

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@npub196k…6435 I only remember thinking the theme song had a shitty singer, and not much of a song either.

2024-07-28 01:48:31 UTC

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@npub1c83…8gsr Klingons? Turn in your badge, you're no Star Trek fan.

2024-07-25 20:45:28 UTC

Hey lazyweb - are modern smoke detectors capable of distinguishing steam (e.g. from a bathroom shower) from actual smoke?

2024-07-25 19:13:10 UTC

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@npub1tyh…kepp walk out and start your own company ...

2024-07-25 03:09:56 UTC

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@npub1ua7…rrg3 I guess. It used to be that only Uncle Sam could retrieve that data from the telcos, but I guess just about anyone can buy the data these days.

2024-05-27 22:53:59 UTC

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https://mastodon.social/@JoeUchill/112493385783974293

2024-05-10 22:27:29 UTC

Just a few minutes ago in Bunbeg #aurora
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/419/146/727/933/443/original/daeba6189294fdaa.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/419/146/774/956/828/original/5517759381337a0f.jpg

2024-04-29 02:52:26 UTC

Most sci-fi stories involving time travel involve a mechanism that's incredibly rare and/or difficult to operate.
What if complete plans for a working time machine, including its power source, were published anonymously on the web, in a decentralized fashion? (Impossible to identify who published it, or from where, and thus making it impossible to go back and prevent the publication.) What if anybody could build their own, using commonly available parts and tools?

2024-04-21 03:51:34 UTC

It's only April and my PV panels have already hit a peak output over 10% over their rated capacity (yesterday). The power graph from today clearly shows the jump around 9am when the sun is finally in front of the house. The house faces SSW so the panels aren't getting direct illumination from sunrise, though they're still producing a tiny bit of power then.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/307/174/072/526/043/original/146966cd4fb88f9c.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/307/174/078/447/675/original/34576372e15c8941.jpg

2024-04-16 03:11:44 UTC

Tfw you're midway thru the red-eye return flight to Europe from the US, and you're going to swap the US SIM card out of your phone, and you push a paperclip into the SIMcard holder's eject hole, and it pops out suddenly and you see the microSD and SIM cards go flying into the darkness.

2024-03-17 01:00:51 UTC

#caturday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/108/322/628/137/970/original/a495edf4b0f0d8b1.jpg

2024-03-15 21:03:50 UTC

Other cryptocurrency projects talk a big game about being the future of money, but they're all just scams to separate speculators from their cash. #Monero has demonstrated time and time again that it's actually focused on being a useful currency, not a vehicle for speculators. https://blog.bitfinex.com/education/the-fortunes-of-monero/

2024-03-12 18:00:20 UTC

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@npub1zr8…lmdn grooming is how cats assert dominance. Imagine the opposite, if the winning cat started doing what humans do.

2024-03-12 17:56:50 UTC

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@npub1vku…vh99 probably, but the bulk of the work is in accumulating the info in the first place. That's why you need apps like Mozilla Stumbler.

2024-03-12 17:54:29 UTC

First spec for storage of digital data in DNA
in case you'd forgotten that you're already living in a sci-fi world... https://www.snia.org/news_events/newsroom/dna-data-storage-alliance-releases-its-first-specifications

2024-03-10 13:27:38 UTC

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While the telco of course has the GSM tower location info, 3rd parties had to collect the info themselves. Google's army of Streetview cars built out their tower database. Mozilla's Stumbler app was used to collect theirs. All of these data brokers keep their info centrally, and map apps on your phone query them on demand.
The telcos know where you are, but there's no good reason to let 3rd parties know all the time.

2024-03-09 17:48:11 UTC

CDMA lost out to GSM/LTE but one nice thing the CDMA networks did that GSM doesn't - CDMA cell towers included their latitude/longitude coordinates in their tower info. This allowed map apps to coarsely triangulate your location without any other information.
Apps can also triangulate from GSM cell tower IDs, but only by querying a provider's database of tower ID to location info.
With CDMA you could use your maps without Google always knowing where you are...

2024-02-29 00:55:05 UTC

Bitcoin sucks, literally. Sucks electricity, among other things... https://mastodon.social/@fj/112009495941530784

2024-02-18 16:03:10 UTC

Good old #OpenSSL https://bugs.openldap.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10176#c2
Called it https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/23575
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/953/302/086/986/168/original/78d03cb2b4568e3a.png

2024-02-17 02:28:50 UTC

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@npub1038…gl4y so that means N95 masks are charged up capacitors? How long before all that charge leaks away? Can they be recharged by end users? Does getting them wet short them out and dissipate the charge?

2024-02-16 19:33:49 UTC

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@npub1fyf…7yhp cat-holic?

2024-02-15 11:50:05 UTC

Keeping track of compromised SSL certificates with #LMDB https://www.hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/blog/2024/01/16/pwned-certificates-on-the-fediverse.html
Personally I think this is actually a natural use case for #OpenLDAP since all of the necessary search and indexing functions are already there. But hey, knock yourself out.

2024-02-15 02:53:57 UTC

https://github.com/juji-io/datalevin
A simple, fast and versatile #Datalog database built on #LMDB

2024-02-14 19:59:31 UTC

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@npub1ua7…rrg3 When all else fails, binary patch the executable file. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36870/elfedit-1.html

2024-02-14 19:53:09 UTC

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@npub1llr…vvmp really good job with the detail work on the atria

2024-02-13 08:18:59 UTC

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@npub1rml…xa6t
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/923/189/164/687/839/original/7ac4923a5f98243d.png

2024-02-13 02:13:19 UTC

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HackerNews is really hacker-wannabe trash. These folks are hopeless. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39351257
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/921/749/975/860/411/original/d274ae7d2126486d.png

2024-02-13 01:09:30 UTC

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@npub18h0…crws Cat Antagonized Design? Sounds like he's just doing a standard job of it.

2024-02-12 15:35:43 UTC

Anyone have any tips on high speed USB-2 microSD card readers?
I've got cards that read 100MB/sec in a USB-3 reader. They ought to be able to max out USB-2, with at least 50MB/sec, Most that I've found only reach 20MB/sec though.

2024-02-11 03:06:24 UTC

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@npub10z6…dmke just open a ticket in the ITS

2024-02-10 22:44:57 UTC

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Love this commentary - #MongoDB "notorious for losing data if a gnat sneezed in the server room." #mmap #lmdb http://ace.mu.nu/archives/408283.php
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/909/603/199/824/882/original/52afe74a40aa3cb2.png

2024-02-09 14:45:08 UTC

There was a paper published in 2022 that was highly critical of using #mmap in a database management system. I wrote a lot about it on twitter back then, but have collected it all into a blog post now. tl;dr the paper is full of crap.
https://www.symas.com/post/are-you-sure-you-want-to-use-mmap-in-your-dbms #lmdb #dbms

2024-02-08 11:46:39 UTC

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@npub1c2g…rk4w coinmarketcap is owned by binance. Not a trustworthy resource.

2024-02-07 11:09:04 UTC

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@npub1a56…jgz2 yeah, I guess the panels will soak up UV, which still gets thru clouds.

2024-02-07 10:01:51 UTC

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@npub1a56…jgz2 speaking of which, I'm getting PV panels installed in a couple weeks. Plus a 5kWh battery. Ireland had a €2400 grant for solar installs so I figured might as well.

2024-02-07 01:52:24 UTC

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I'll dwell on sanakirja for a moment because it's one of many projects that got started because its founder asked us for a feature in LMDB that we rejected. https://lists.openldap.org/hyperkitty/list/openldap-devel@openldap.org/thread/6DPSXUDORI5ZIGLA2NKQB6JFKRLIFU3S/ So they figured they could fork our code and build it themselves. Fork / DIY is pretty much how open source is supposed to work, in theory. In practice the results can be pretty uneven. So it goes.

2024-02-07 01:29:33 UTC

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None of the other DB engines can get anywhere near this degree of scalability. But what's really mindboggling is to see the results for sanakirja - instead of getting faster as more threads are used, from 8 threads and up it gets exponentially slower: 1 / 4 / 8 /16 / 32 gets 678 / 266 / 620 / 3500 / 4313ms
Whatever they're doing, they've done horribly wrong.

2024-02-07 01:26:28 UTC

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On reads, of course LMDB blows all the other away, as usual. Interestingly, they test with 4, 8, 16, and 32 concurrent reader threads on a Ryzen 5900X CPPU which only has 12 cores / 24 hardware threads.
Again, as expected, the LMDB read rate scales linearly from 1 / 4 / 8 threads, at 556ms / 141ms / 72ms. Essentially perfect scaling. The jump to 16 threads and 47ms isn't linear because the CPU has run out of cores, likewise for 32 threads at 44ms.

2024-02-07 01:22:25 UTC

#redb is a pure Rust embedded DB engine modeled after #LMDB . They got some interesting benchmark results, comparing to other embedded DBs. https://crates.io/crates/redb
Despite having the slowest single writes, LMDB has the fastest bulk load speed. This is no accident; while we don't worry too much about runtime write perf, we absolutely want to get a freshly reloaded server up and running ASAP, and fast bulk load enables that.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/887/567/996/056/736/original/71b207310335b00a.png

2024-02-06 21:09:17 UTC

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@npub1kut…c7av lol, came here to say the same. Good post.
I still write HTML4 by hand. All I care about is disseminating info, not flashy looks.

2024-02-06 18:03:54 UTC

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@npub1zhq…97rk nor 32-bit ARM either, while we're on the subject

2024-02-06 15:02:02 UTC

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@npub1su4…a0dw cool, so your $100/yr subscription puts you in their subscriber database, right?

2024-02-05 21:22:21 UTC

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@npub1su4…a0dw forget it, just assume all porn videos are fake and they become irrelevant. https://mastodon.social/@hyc/111064161737603346

2024-02-05 15:09:28 UTC

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@npub1dpk…wczc dude, you should have accepted the extended warranty for the elevator.

2024-02-04 17:03:15 UTC

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@npub1llr…vvmp sometimes we deliberately trip traps, to meet the trapper

2024-02-04 16:16:53 UTC

We built on top of POSIX because that's what was most available, and generally pretty reliable too.
#OpenLDAP is hyper-efficient today because we analyzed every layer of it, profiled and benchmarked the hell out of it. Memory allocation, concurrency, locking overhead, network and disk I/O, etc. Optimized from the bottom up, because you can't build anything good without a solid foundation.
Could go further into the kernel, network stack etc. Been there/done that, and others are there now.

2024-02-04 15:44:01 UTC

I note this same thing frequently. https://mastodon.social/@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to/111872970149538242
But I think it's more than just a disdain for history. Many of my peers have lived thru all these cycles. Why aren't they all speaking up each time? I believe there's a massive failing in education because there's zero continuity, not enough people are passing on their gained experience to the cohorts just a few years behind them. So every generation builds the world again from scratch, instead of enhancing what's already been built.

2024-02-03 23:58:36 UTC

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@npub1qnu…z5ej the cat must love that!

2024-02-03 18:39:13 UTC

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@npub10dx…jdjc https://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/

2024-02-03 11:20:13 UTC

389DS has switched their default backend from #BerkeleyDB to #LMDB. https://www.port389.org/docs/389ds/FAQ/Berkeley-DB-deprecation.html
The difference in config complexity is quite dramatic.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/867/278/777/647/849/original/97882fd3e3044ad1.jpg

2024-02-03 02:40:19 UTC

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@npub1n2s…hkx2 sounds easy enough. You could script it in awk or csh.

2024-02-02 19:59:38 UTC

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@npub1nn8…0njv @npub18je…zfy3 yeah what could possibly go wrong...
wasn't this the plot of The Omega Man?

2024-02-02 19:45:33 UTC

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@npub1xg6…e6jt and if they ever actually believed Dems had tampered with an election, they wouldn't be trying to pass this.

2024-02-02 16:58:26 UTC

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@npub12c5…509u I think I missed the fact that the work was industry-funded. In that case, my comment about MI taxpayers is off base.

2024-02-02 15:56:52 UTC

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@npub1hce…c5cz Performance above all; preallocated space is faster than incrementally allocated.
And zero-maintenance is another priority. Easiest is to just set maxsize to "the size of my available storage" and forget about it. If you run out of storage, well, that's a provisioning issue and you would have run into that problem anyway, with incremental allocation.

2024-02-02 15:49:51 UTC

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@npub1hce…c5cz there's a resize function. But if you're using it, You've Done Something Wrong.

2024-02-02 15:33:18 UTC

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@npub12c5…509u It looks BSDish. https://git.openldap.org/openldap/openldap/-/blob/UMICH_LDAP_3_3/COPYRIGHT?ref_type=tags
And as I recall, when they went on to Netscape, they took all their subsequent work closed.