Ben Zanin

Robertson screwdriver owner, believer in the value of personal-scale computing and skeptic of the value of computing scales any larger than that

(previously https://twitter.com/gnomon ; account de-funked)

Small hacks: https://git.sr.ht/~gnomon/

Pronouns: he/him
💍: Katie Lou Boo (npub1myf…3whl)
Home: 🇨🇦 Toronto, Canada
Trash animals: raccoons, possums, skunks, rats, squirrels, not geese

Public Key

npub12r057c0mkenl95y75a2hufpyuv8e7we9vqy2kjnk2z26rhun7u2sawqh4d

NIP-05 Address

gnomon_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9ph60v8amvelj6z02w4t7ysjwxrul8vjkqz9tffm9p9dpm7flw9gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dslm6gd3

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub12r057c0mkenl95y75a2hufpyuv8e7we9vqy2kjnk2z26rhun7u2sawqh4d

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Last Notes

2026-06-17 11:49:06 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@andrewducker/116764925855918719
I am skeptical but curious about the results and the specific methodology and equipment
#note14sc…u820

2026-05-25 00:59:35 UTC

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this cannot go on.

2026-05-21 11:25:38 UTC

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ANGINE DE POITRINE

2026-05-14 12:00:49 UTC

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/13/women-home-buyers-men-dating
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-sad-wives-of-ai/
https://sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/26-decentering-men-is-not-misandry
Some new developments on the "men as a demographic getting frustrated about having to treat women like actual equal people, women not tolerating anything less anymore" front.
(Dear men: live up to those ideals to which you've been paying lip service. This is the mess that the men before us left and that we get to clean up. That's the job.)

2026-05-06 20:27:14 UTC

You know that 4GB AI model that Google Chrome silently installs on your machine?
Keep in mind that the Chrome team decided to do that because *they thought it was a good idea*. If user outrage is sufficient to cause that decision to be rolled back, they'll still push the same AI features, only hosted remotely instead of locally.
If you're going to trust software from a development team somewhere, you are making a decision to trust their processes and to accept their pressures.
Choose wisely.

2026-04-16 01:05:23 UTC

*deep sigh*
*resets back to 0 the "Days Since I Spelled It `pythong`" counter*
AGAIN

2026-04-14 01:16:35 UTC

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OK SO
"Espresso" is a squiggly sort of beast, epistemologically speaking, but there is general consensus that you get espresso when you brew coffee under enough pressure to extract non-water-soluble oils and also to emulsify some gases in the brew. Low-pressure methods like Aeropress (0.25-1.5 bar) and moka pots (2-3 bar) can produce intensely flavoured coffee but they fall short of the 4-9 bar pressures that produce "true" espresso.
1/n

2026-04-14 00:28:55 UTC

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oh jeez it's not a short list
- open source LED flashlight firmware
- folding bicycles
- mechanical keyboard designs
- music metadata tagging strategies and trade-offs
- pneumatic, mechanical, and other non-electric espresso makers
- mechanical side-release buckles
- scripting under POSIX sh, Bourne, and ksh93
- battery chemistry types

2026-04-12 04:28:16 UTC

If all you do in your tech career is:
1. When something is slow, you look carefully at the output of a profiler or a query plan & make measured suggestions about what to improve;
2. When something breaks badly, you gently but insistently ask what & why until you truly know, then the next time similar work is needed you bring up how to avoid doing what broke last time; and
3. When someone lacks info, you make them feel good for learning instead of bad for not knowing;
You will do good work.

2026-03-24 12:17:31 UTC

I have a feeling, not yet filtered into reasonable thoughts & distilled into a proper argument, that the next phase of free software should focus on..:
1. software written by people (as opposed to businesses or their LLM pseudopods),
2. for people (as opposed to "customers" or other businesses),
3. using participatory processes (as opposed to projects like Android that accept no contributions, or have closed bug trackers or mailing lists),
4. emphasizing users learning & changing core code.

2026-03-17 00:09:42 UTC

Not "Atlassian laid off 1,600 people, 10% of its workforce"
But rather: "Atlassian leadership, with 300,000+ paying customers & ~5.2 billion USD in revenue & 6+ billion USD in assets in 2025, failed to line up their financial projections with their own staffing projections, and acted to place the burden of this gap on their direct reports rather than leadership, executive compensation packages, assets, or shareholders"
Layoffs should be personally mortifying. Boards should change.
For shame.

2026-03-07 22:42:04 UTC

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I worry that even in those cases where the slop isn't shipped directly to users, there will still be many management-down conversations with a shape like "my vibecoded MVP lit up in one weekend; of course it'll take longer to write a \"proper\" version, but six months? Really? How much can we improve the MVP with two weeks of work instead?"
And we're going to discuss over and over and over again how there is no smooth, iterative, safe progression from a house of cards to a skyscraper.

2026-03-07 20:58:45 UTC

Three synagogues in Toronto have taken gunfire overnight in the past week.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-synagogue-hit-by-gunfire-9.7112348
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gta-synagogue-2-shots-fired-9.7118864
This is appalling and unacceptable and it needs to stop.

2026-03-06 15:16:15 UTC

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those three years of Latin in high school back in 1917 really stuck with me eh

2026-03-06 14:52:00 UTC

Me: *waiting for the bus*
Bus:
Bus:
Bus:
...
Bus: *three bi arrive at the same time*

2026-03-06 14:50:18 UTC

Me: could I have an espresso and a ham and cheese croissant, please?
Them: *clearly in the breakfast rush flow, grabs a croissant and smashes it flat in the panini press* did you want that warmed up
Me: actually no, could I not, please? Unheated is fine.
Them: *pause, half second of puzzlement*
Them: *extracts croissant from the press, looks at it briefly, tries to fluff it up like a small flat pillow*
😆

2026-02-27 14:28:31 UTC

I get the strong impression that early, learning developers are better served by the tools offered with fantasy game consoles than by professional dev tools these days.
That impression underscores my belief that good dev tools should optimize for joy, experimentation, discovery, learning, and play *first*, and raw throughput second, if it all.
1/2

2026-02-26 03:31:43 UTC

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in all seriousness I feel like this is unfair to shadow IT.
Most shadow IT exists due to (perceived) necessity and a (perceived) inability to tap into necessary services through existing org structures. It's usually built with good intentions to solve real problems by people whose job does not include knowing better.
Agentic AI-based services are almost all being built by people whose job *does* include knowing better. They should.

2026-02-19 13:11:23 UTC

Some friends and I have been exploring alternatives to Discord and Slack since both services are heading in intolerable directions.
We've looked at obvious choices like Matrix and Zulip, less obvious ones like Signal and Delta Chat, and some weird ones like the chat system built into the Fossil version control system.
I hoped Delta Chat would add channels, but no luck. I kind of expected we'd end up defaulting to Matrix.
But IRCv3 (Ergo / Goguma / Irctoday) is in the lead. Surprising.

2026-01-28 22:51:27 UTC

I use Debian by choice and I am required to care about macOS and Windows for professional reasons, and I am surprised every other day that the least annoying desktop experience of the three is Debian, by a huge margin.
It's not *great*. It's just OK. It's a little bit better than it was ten years ago.
But by just getting a little bit better every once in a while, and by not regressing catastrophically, it has now lapped two multi billion dollar multinational corp offerings.
smh

2026-01-25 20:28:27 UTC

Bleah, it's annoying that the FLACs purchased from 7Digital include the text "... (Explicit)" in both the filenames and the embedded metadata of albums released alongside versions edited for radio.
It would be ever so slightly less annoying if they would tag the radio version instead, perhaps with the text "... (Bowdlerized)" or "... (Radio Edit)" or "... (for delicate infants)"
Welp, this is what horrific shell one-liners solve in this household

2026-01-25 01:13:59 UTC

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yeah, I get your point, but adversarial training data exfiltration is a vulnerability of current LLM training / inference techniques, not weaknesses of particular models or training processes per se.
But I'm picking nits here, this minor point does not detract from your argument.
(edit: I'll get you links to primary sources likely tomorrow, I'm out watching a shitty movie tonight with a bunch of turbonerds)

2026-01-25 01:02:56 UTC

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hmm, I think it might be worth noting that there are several decently well documented techniques and mechanisms for causing LLMs to reproduce large sections of their training data sets, with varying levels of fidelity (up to and including "lossless reproduction" in some cases, though those are the exceptions).
cf. e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.17035 (2023)
Not that your argument is invalid, only that "none of the information used in training is preserved" is tough to defend.

2026-01-09 05:34:42 UTC

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that
is a little faster than I can mash buttons

2026-01-06 23:07:55 UTC

Breath of the Wild came out almost _ten years ago_?? 2017? Holy cow.

2026-01-05 04:18:36 UTC

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it cannot, and a company attempting to do that makes itself a ripe and remunerative target for any enterprising labour lawyer and I'm just going to mention the name Lior Samfiru here for no particular reason.

2026-01-04 01:10:47 UTC

I'm trying to talk @npub1myf…3whl into watching Red One tonight.
Help me out lads

2025-12-31 14:23:36 UTC

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have... have you seen the extremely flirty Parmesan cheese ad spread
I feel like cheese flirting is its own special domain into which I dare not tread

2025-12-21 03:05:40 UTC

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pph, as if that would work

2025-12-20 00:16:58 UTC

Hey #Canadians: we support each other, we stand up for each other, and we show up for each other. Here is how we do that right now, today:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7027
Even if you only read the petition, learning about what the Saskatchewan and Alberta provincial governments are attempting is a step in the right direction. Signing the petition is a step. It is going to be a long journey, but this is not one we can sit out.
#TransgenderRights

2025-12-13 21:19:12 UTC

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was it actually named wolfquest?? Do you remember on what platform it ran? I need to find out whether this was a real thing or some kind of hallucinated fever dream

2025-12-04 01:31:22 UTC

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...I'm preaching to the choir, amn't I? Just committed the traditional fediverse sin of infodumping about a topic I really care about before reading into your user profile.
🤦‍♂️
Very sorry about that.

2025-12-04 01:29:43 UTC

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which is to say: I love Canada. I love my country. But the way we are behaving with petroleum is not an outlier: *it is what we do*. We can do so much better, and we absolutely should.
To do that, the industries profiting from this behavior need to be severely reined in; and to do _that_ we need to knock the slats out of their continued excellent success at keeping even the fact that they are doing it out of the public consciousness.
2/2

2025-12-04 01:25:56 UTC

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not to rebut your point but rather than reinforce it: the Canadian asbestos industry fought tooth and nail with increasingly dirty tactics¹ to continue mining & selling asbestos from and to markets with weaker health regulations and vulnerability to Canada's reputation for prizing science and health care until a decades-long fight² finally banned the industry... *in 2018*.
1/2
¹: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5664636/
²: https://www.asbestos.com/news/2018/10/22/canada-asbestos-ban-exemptions/
³: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2018/10/the-government-of-canada-takes-measures-to-ban-asbestos-and-asbestoscontaining-products.html

2025-11-13 18:35:12 UTC

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I support the idea of n-key rollover for philosophical reasons that I'll get into later
BUT, more importantly
Your mention of regaining the physical space necessary for the switch diodes reminds me: (1) have you seen the Discipline 65% PCB¹ with its neat arrangement of through-hole diodes lined up across the top of the board? And (2) do you know if there is such thing as an SMT multi-diode component that could further save on surface area?
¹: https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline

2025-11-09 02:26:23 UTC

I had reason today to use a styptic pencil for the very first time. (Just a minor shaving nick in an inconvenient spot.) Functional!

2025-11-06 16:41:19 UTC

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_did_ just recently publish v0.1 of korgalore, a tool to push a local list mirror into a Gmail account, and _that_ might be one way of keeping a server-side read/unread status synchronized across several of your reader clients, at the expense of having to deal with Google.
https://social.kernel.org/objects/676458f6-81fe-4512-a788-128afcff09fd
[end of thread]

2025-11-06 16:38:57 UTC

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I'm not sure how well this will work for your desire to synchronize read/unread messages between multiple machines though since most NNTP clients I know about keep those records in a machine-local file. Do you have this problem solved already?
It is possible to read groups from a local mirror via IMAP as well through public-inbox-imapd, but I believe that is read-only, so read/unread status would not be stored on your local server either.
...

2025-11-06 16:37:49 UTC

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Adding additional mailing lists to my inbox (e.g. https://lore.kernel.org/git/_/text/mirror/ ) is a matter of running the mirroring instructions, waiting for the `public-inbox-index` step to finish, then either SIGHUP'ing or just stopping/restarting the public-inbox-nttpd process. (And updating my NNTP client subscription list, of course.)
...

2025-11-06 16:34:03 UTC

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The indexing process on my machine took a few minutes and produced a ~175MB Xapian index and a ~1MB header index.
Then I started a local public-inbox NNTP daemon with..:
```
public-inbox-nntpd -l 127.0.0.1:1119
```
(When invoked interactively that process produces some interesting output on the console - worth peeking through once or twice.)
After that everything worked with no drama: I connected to my local NNTP server with a client (GNUS in emacs, in my case).
...

2025-11-06 16:30:11 UTC

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Then after I had that initial repo clone in place, the other mirroring steps worked properly:
```
cd ~/public-inbox/ && \
public-inbox-init -V1 --ng inbox.comp.mail.public-inbox.meta \
meta ./meta https://public-inbox.org/meta \
meta@public-inbox.org
public-inbox-index ./meta
```
That created the Xapian content indices and the sqlite3 message map header indices under ./meta/public-inbox/ and my config at ~/.public-inbox/config
...

2025-11-06 16:26:54 UTC

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The key point that was missing from the public-inbox docs for me is that a V1 mirror _is only a bare git repo plus some extra metadata_, whereas a V2 mirror _is a directory that holds metadata and several git repos_. I needed this context to understand why I was failing to mirror the public-inbox development list.
I created ~/public-inbox/ and then per https://public-inbox.org/meta/_/text/mirror/ ran:
```
git clone --mirror https://public-inbox.org/meta ~/public-inbox/meta/
```
...

2025-11-06 16:26:34 UTC

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That idea makes a lot of sense, it's similar to why I set up local list mirrors too.
(I'm going to thread a few responses in a row together here - apologies in advance for the spam. I'll mark the end of the thread when I get there.)

2025-11-06 14:06:13 UTC

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I was a bit stumped at first too, unfortunately. (In particular I was tripped up by how the public-inbox list itself was a V1 archive but almost all the other lists I care about are V2, and the difference is material.)
Would you like some help? I've worked through these things recently, they're fresh in my mind.

2025-10-19 02:09:12 UTC

For anyone else considering the seasonal pursuit of carving a pumpkin and spending time looking through dollar store toolkits or scrolling through dozens of identical crappy plastic tool sets in attractive clamshell zip cases on Amazon, let me save you some time.
The magic term you want is "drywall saw".
(If you're one of those maniacs who uses high speed rotary tools on your gourds, disregard my words. I have no wisdom for you.)

2025-10-03 02:37:36 UTC

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dire Least Weasels

2025-09-30 16:58:43 UTC

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ah heck, that's unfortunate.
Have you watched any of Alien: Earth yet? If you have, how does the video-game-cutscene feeling compare between those two shows in your opinion?

2025-09-22 02:01:50 UTC

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"Did we calculate that the other shore was just over the horizon?"
"Yes, so we should see it momentarily."
They're paddling a single-hull inflatable boat _over the horizon_? Can we get a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation about the distance to the horizon based on the curvature of Mars? I am skeptical of their paddling speed estimates.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 02:00:06 UTC

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ooh they brought pool floaties, good planning
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:58:28 UTC

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The crew preparing for the buffeting of explosively clawing up out of a gravity well by fastening nothing more than a car-style lap belt is pretty hilarious, you have to admit.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:52:07 UTC

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MONSTER CLAW
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:50:40 UTC

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Ooh are we about to meet a rat-crab-bat-spider monster?
I think we are!!
Aww lookit the little cutie
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:48:20 UTC

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...could you please also not smoke a pipe in a spacecraft running an atmosphere of compressed oxygen and recirculated air
...directly next to the two-light alert panel with a green light labelled "NORMAL", a red light labelled "EXCESSIVE", and a panel title that reads "OXYGEN CONSUMPTION"
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:47:25 UTC

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"Like the super intelligence that keeps a colony of ants working in perfect unity back on earth."
👀 @npub1ppe…qv2g 🐜
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:42:48 UTC

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MONSTER PLANT-VINE-TENTACLE ATTACK
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:42:11 UTC

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"I know you think I acted like a hysterical female back there, but I can take care of myself. I won't get out of your sight."
"Have it your way, Irish."
*she immediately walks out of his sight*
welp✕3
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:40:54 UTC

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This horrid red filter for all these outdoor scenes on Mars is pretty hard on the eyes, but I expect it was probably a pretty clever way to shoot a bunch of footage with cheaper black and white film, and also camouflage some prop work and set dressing that would otherwise more strongly challenge the willing suspension of disbelief.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:38:28 UTC

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Could you not gesture at your crew member with your sidearm while keeping your finger on the trigger please, that would be great
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:33:45 UTC

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"Suppose this alien infection spreads? To all of us?"
Maybe that was a thought worth considering before you put the other doctor behind an isolation *checks notes* uhhhh curtain? Oh well yolo
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:32:26 UTC

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WINDOW MONSTER
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:31:37 UTC

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"No no, I'll go. It's about time Iris and I had a chance to use this expensive equipment of ours."
...says the guy standing inside an interplanetary spaceship
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:23:46 UTC

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Oh jeez, can you even imagine the horrible consequences of using an electric razor in a zero-gravity craft with recirculated air? That's an out-the-airlock offense for sure.
Uhh also putting on perfume, that would not be great either.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:21:46 UTC

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"Mars... the angry red planet."
*twelve dozen geese honk in perfect synchrony*
*train horns honk in the distance*
*ticker tape drops all over downtown*
THAT'S THE NAME OF THE MOVIE
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:19:31 UTC

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SPACE LECH CONFIRMED
please do not try to date your coworkers
especially when you have to share living quarters with them that are about the size of a couple of large phone booths taped together
_doubly especially not right at the beginning of the mission_
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:14:04 UTC

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If they keep referring to Dr. Ryan as "the girl" I'm going to get a bit ticked off.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:11:48 UTC

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Call me OHSA brained but I feel like that rocket exit/entry ramp could really benefit from a handrail or something.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:06:55 UTC

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"Then there is fuel aboard!"
"But there's only one question: how much?"
I thought we covered a whole bunch of other questions in the immediately prior scene..?
(voiceover) "The answers to these questions and many more..."
Right, exactly, more than just one question then.
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:03:56 UTC

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Would that all meetings ran so swiftly and conclusively!
#monsterdon

2025-09-22 01:00:07 UTC

Getting ready for #monsterdon, kicking off in just a moment!

2025-09-07 23:34:51 UTC

All right, #monsterdon, let's get ready to roll tonight.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/165/605/453/871/960/original/c9253cb6a631e25f.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/165/605/721/791/897/original/e25a7a34b36a2836.jpg

2025-08-27 12:31:36 UTC

[@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 ) hey man, how are you doing today? I've been a bit buried under work the last 4-5 weeks and behind on my timeline here, I only just saw your health scare the other day.

2025-08-22 23:23:14 UTC

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I think Mozilla's management _should_ measure how many of their users hate "AI" and reflexively disable it. I think the product teams are deliberately not measuring this sentiment right now because if those numbers were easily visible in telemetry it would be plain as day from the CEO down to the interns that this direction is alienating exactly the userbase Mozilla has cultivated.
I think they are not being intellectually honest with themselves, and I think they must be to survive.

2025-08-22 23:19:40 UTC

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You're right, it will, and that's my main point: Mozilla has charged off in a direction that is causing it to lose decades of accumulated goodwill they earned by being careful stewards of the trust of their users. They are not being intellectually honest with themselves.
The fine points you're raising are valid and should be examined, carefully! But Mozilla needs to get the broad strokes right first, or those details won't even matter: the userbase will simply abandon them.

2025-08-22 20:28:03 UTC

For pete's sake, @npub16pr…crsg : if you want to measure whether the AI/ML features are worth a damn, put a big green "disable all AI in my browser" button on the version update screen and put some telemetry around how many people instantly click it.
Just about everyone I know who has taken the 142 update is working through about:config menus to toggle off everything under browser.ml.* and grumbling about it, or just straight-up abandoning Firefox in exasperation.
Turn the ship around. *Please*.

2025-08-16 03:19:25 UTC

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ooh while you're at it you should try mbsync/isync and mu/mu4e
You will certainly not regret trying mbsync and mu4e

2025-08-07 02:38:46 UTC

Hell of a thing to hear "buy into our tool fad or get of this industry" from the CEO of a company built on the halo of goodwill surrounding a movement literally built on & from determination to write software that cannot be taken away from anyone again.
Hell of a thing.
I don't think it's dunderheaded point-missing of cataclysmic proportion. I think it's a calculated risk to mortgage social credibility with developers against social credibility with investors.
I think it's a losing bet.

2025-07-30 17:43:17 UTC

HEY #BikeTO #mastobikes GUESS WHAT: we're keeping the bike lanes on Bloor, University, and Yonge, per Cycle Toronto's charter challenge of Ontario Bill 212.
https://www.cycleto.ca/cycle_toronto_wins
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/cycletoronto/pages/8767/attachments/original/1753895854/CycleTO___EcoJustice_Release.pdf?1753895854
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/cycletoronto/pages/8767/attachments/original/1753891585/Cycle_Toronto_v._AGO_Reasons_for_Judgment_PBS_July_30_2025.pdf?1753891585
Two months ago I stood out in the rain while the names of my neighbours killed in traffic were read aloud¹. This decision is a concrete step towards doing something to prevent future deaths.
¹: https://mastodon.social/@gnomon/114549722429678597

2025-07-21 02:04:16 UTC

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Why does every person in this movie seem to hate every other person?? This movie is from the mid 80s, not the 70s, I thought they were over this schtick by then.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:58:42 UTC

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"Maybe tomorrow it'll be our world again."
"Was it ever?"
Ooooooh, deep philosophical ruminations from the same movie that gave us an exposition sequence over fart noises in the men's room not ten minutes ago
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:55:53 UTC

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*jukebox explodes in a shower of sparks*
HAH, they make those things out of the same stuff as the bridge consoles in the NCC-1701-D?
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:53:37 UTC

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"I'll tell you one thing, you sure make love like a hero."
!?
!!?!?!?
Actually, you know what? Sure, whatever, why not. Have fun, you crazy kids. Stay safe.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:47:44 UTC

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They said the thing! They said the title of the movie in the movie!!
*fireworks go off*
*a sick guitar riff blares out over the loudspeaker*
*Shredder's tunnel-boring machine emerges from the ground in the front yard for some reason and a dozen eagles fly up out of it in perfect formation*
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:45:24 UTC

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The wage-stealing truckstop owner happening to have a rocket launcher just lying around is the least implausible part of this film so far.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:41:10 UTC

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OK, in the mythology of this movie it's clear that diesel is the most menacing form of fuel, with petrol coming in a distant second.
So: are two-stroke engines more terrifying than four-stroke? Where would a Wankel cycle fit in? Are aircraft engines scary? Do diesel locomotives get a chance to inflict agony or are they avoided by the murderous spirit because they cannot menace in anything but a predefined path?
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:38:41 UTC

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*all the malevolent diesel trucks in the parking lot of the truck stop jolt to some kind of terrifying un-life, horns blaring as if to announce their murderous intent*
Hmmmm sounds like Ottawa during the trucker convoy
only better organized maybe
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:31:34 UTC

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Love the ice cream truck playing a tinkly rendition of "King of the Road" while rolling around in search of a victim.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:26:23 UTC

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Is it just un-minded machines going vicious in this scenario? Connie and Curtis's car seems to be behaving normally, while both of those murderous diesel trucks had nobody in the cabin when they started foaming at the uhhhh radiator grill.
Does Emilio Estevez climbing into the blood-red cabin of the goblin truck render it inert, somehow?
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:20:08 UTC

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The waitress is still serving after taking a turkey knife to the arm and the shoe!?
Can I get an "OHSA" in chat please
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:17:17 UTC

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Oh good, a scene with a bunch of small children having fun at a baseball diamond! Surely nothing bad will happen here.
*coach is slammed in the crotch by a soda machine newly endowed with ballistic projection force, then killed by followup shots to the head*
*the entire team of kids is pelted by the same machine*
*a steamroller bursts through the fence and flattens a kid, Judge-Doom-in-Roger-Rabbit style*
😮
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:14:14 UTC

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Firstly, why is a motorized turkey knife hanging out next to the flat-top grill at all?
Secondly, malevolent motivation aside, why is it able to exert any cutting force at all without any mass or leverage behind it??
I am starting to get the feeling that there may be some holes in this plot
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:07:58 UTC

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None of the physics in this bridge disaster scene make sense..? People are falling in the wrong direction, vehicles lack traction when they should have it and have it when they should lack it, waterlemons seem to be caroming off windshields and sunroofs as if rocket propelled..?
Loving that AC/DC soundtrack though, that part is great.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:05:00 UTC

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"Written for the screen and directed by STEPHEN KING"
Whoops, "Stephen", not "Steven". My bad.
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 01:02:40 UTC

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Steven King put himself in the _second shot_ of the first scene?! HAH
#monsterdon

2025-07-21 00:59:30 UTC

In just a moment we're kicking off this week's #monsterdon! It's Maximum Overdrive (1986). Get your timed mute button ready, or join in!

2025-07-15 17:21:15 UTC

Hey folks in #Toronto, if you have experience working as a barista + shop manager + bike shop person and are looking for a gig, looks like Pedaal at Brunswick / Harbord is hiring: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMIuJp9uTPj/
(I know, I know, sorry about the Instagram link.)
Take a peek through their décor to get an idea of the vibe of the place. (The golden moose head is named Eugene; the year-round pride flags don't have a name.)
🔄🙏
#FediHire #FediHired #coffee #mastobikes #bikeTO

2025-07-10 03:12:35 UTC

[@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 ) how's your back doing today, man?

2025-07-06 17:19:01 UTC

@npub1h7a…m2up update: board #1 en route to Kyle via tracked post, ETA sometime this week; I'm handing off board #2 to scruss in an hour or so face to face; board #3 is on my project desk as I now hunt for a VGA converter since all my display devices are HDMI/DisplayPort/USB-C only 😆😭

2025-07-01 18:46:58 UTC

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wanna see a truly ridiculous thingy??
https://www.sram.com/en/quarq/series/tyrewiz

2025-06-27 20:02:07 UTC

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not even a single moment yet, no!
):
It's almost all because of good things, but basically every waking post-work hour I've had this week has been accounted for. Haven't even been able to get out to the post office to send ms_8502's kit to him. But that's happening tomorrow!
Ooh doc changes, I can probably steal a few minutes while in transit to stuff those into my brain

2025-06-26 01:48:05 UTC

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THE CREATURETTE