Stefan Eissing

curl maintainer, protocol droid, likes to code.

"Nobody has any idea what is actually going on."

Public Key

npub179eu5lkc7wklv8f44w6fz4qpc8gpkk2x8e32k7ha43pgvyj4jkqqqnr96e

NIP-05 Address

icing@chaos-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0zu720mv08t0kr566hdy32squr5qmt9rruc4t0t76cs5xzf2etqqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsu7lt60

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub179eu5lkc7wklv8f44w6fz4qpc8gpkk2x8e32k7ha43pgvyj4jkqqqnr96e

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Last Notes

2026-04-10 19:11:45 UTC

AI business models could work if Moore‘s Law still held. But it no longer does.
Token costs are not going down. Worse, answers use more of them to become better, in order to convince people it is all worth it.
The latest model burns so much money that Anthropic is unwilling to let people use it (yet wants to boast).
There is no cost-equivalent replacement for brains. So far, maybe never. Evolution is hard to beat.
Which is where you can feel good about yourself!🤗

2026-04-02 15:11:01 UTC

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@nprofile…2vzh Can I call you "Hans" from now on?😌

2026-03-10 06:39:34 UTC

Anthropic: "Reviews are billed on token usage and generally average $15–25, scaling with PR [pull request] size and complexity,"
Code reviews on average take about 20 minutes to complete.
In #curl, we could employ at least one person full time only for code reviews for that money.
If we had that money, of course.💁🏻‍♂️
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/09/anthropic_debuts_code_review/

2026-03-05 08:17:49 UTC

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@nprofile…yy9u Wheel World comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_World

2026-03-03 09:16:04 UTC

Look, if hardcore Amiga and Atari "freaks" can work peacefully together on the #curl project, there is hope for humanity yet.😌

2026-03-03 06:26:03 UTC

Everyone is saturated with LLM related articles. Here is another good one by Joshua Rogers.
https://joshua.hu/code-is-art-llm-people-losers

2026-03-01 09:51:08 UTC

I‘d like a 🤝 to end a conversation thread with someone on Fedi, as a UI feature.
Now, it seems common custom to just „like“ the last post of each other and stop writing. But it‘s never 100% clear.

2026-03-01 09:29:39 UTC

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@nprofile…u7sp Then you are pbly correct that the article somewhat hijacked the Maven talk to make a point about non-GH hosted repositories.
( #curl project is guilty of this too, as we have lots of CI jobs pulling dependencies. We try to cache as best as we can, but still it is supersized by the „free“ github CI power we get sponsored)

2026-03-01 09:21:03 UTC

Thinking about making sites slow again. Like really slow. Per source IP.
Because serving fast is no longer in the common interest. Quite the opposite.
I‘d like to keep mail/ssh etc fast, so maybe just in the http(s) ports? Anyone knows how linux traffic shaping can do that?

2026-03-01 08:55:24 UTC

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@nprofile…u7sp The maven source is at https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/maven-sources.git
The github one is a readonly mirror.

2026-03-01 08:29:01 UTC

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@nprofile…u7sp Not sure I get your point. It‘s about cloning/pulling source repositories, not packages, as I understand it.

2026-03-01 08:08:00 UTC

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/28/open_source_opinion/

2026-02-27 13:17:09 UTC

Can cloudflare have a DNS outage already? So I can test my new #curl dns resolve code? Is it asking too much?

2026-02-25 10:27:16 UTC

I am taking ~10.000 IUs of vitamin D3 and some omega3 fish oil daily for 3 months now. Taking low dose of Sertralin for 20 years now, the D3/omega3 additions have greatly increased my well being.
I started when my dentist checked by D3 blood levels and they were rock bottom.
Just fyi, in case you struggle, it might be worth a try. Everyone is different, ymmv.

2026-02-24 07:05:10 UTC

„The paper cites a race condition that an agent attempted to fix by inserting a delay in the code with a Thread.Sleep“
Meaning, it was in its training data.
Meaning, for better agents you need better training data. You need better code. You need to avoid code produced by previous models.
Now, where would AI companies find such code?🙃
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/microsoft_ai_entry_level_russinovich_hanselman/

2026-02-21 06:37:13 UTC

Whatever you can pay, the AI hyperscalers will pay more. Because their money is free, as long as they keep the wheel spinning.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/20/ai_blamed_again_as_hard_drives_sell_out/

2026-02-20 11:53:22 UTC

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@nprofile…w48x Yes, especially renaming function parameters is nasty stuff. Naughty boy!😌

2026-02-20 07:39:34 UTC

I waded in #curl rebasing pain with a bunch of stacked PRs yesterday. That was unfun and took the whole day.
Maybe I have not found the best way to handle stacked PRs with current git, yet.
Otoh, the colleague who changed variable names all over the code for fun and merged it without review is luckily working remote…😌

2026-02-19 08:17:28 UTC

Can someone explain to me why unsupported FOSS projects should care about CVEs?
It seems that everyone thinks they should. But I could not explain why.🤷🏻‍♂️

2026-02-01 09:06:35 UTC

Fosdem people: @nprofile…2vzh is at the cafeteria around 11, handing out curl stickers.
Remember: if your laptop has #curl installed, you need a sticker or it will stop working after the grace period!😌

2026-01-22 09:13:59 UTC

I once came into a commercial project assigned to company A for writing the requirement specification and company B for doing the implementation.
A had already used up 80% of the total budget. B was getting a bit netvous.
I did not stay long.💁🏻‍♂️

2026-01-12 09:03:13 UTC

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@nprofile…z99u ah, thanks for clarifying.

2026-01-12 08:13:03 UTC

Working on #curl‘s rate limiting again today. It‘s a fun challenge to get this „right“.
Just a few users of this feature, though. Like Steam, Roku and Netflix. That I know of, at least.
Do you use rate limiting transfers? Do you know anyone besides #curl offering this?

2026-01-09 09:10:40 UTC

Pro tip: when your application logs curl traces, write them to the file in the order they happen...🤦🏻‍♂️

2025-12-19 07:03:28 UTC

The Register is on WaterFox. I tried it a little, appeares fast and responsive. In comparision, I found Vivaldi a bit sluggish. Ymmv.
Will start using WaterFox. See how that goes.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/18/firefox_no_ai_alternative_waterfox/

2025-12-15 08:03:10 UTC

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@nprofile…6rpq @nprofile…59nr one of our CI jobs is building #curl with Fil-C and running our test suite. So far, no bugs have been found to my knowledge.

2025-11-21 07:51:18 UTC

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@nprofile…02fp Above infinity, it wraps around to negative infinity.

2025-11-14 14:40:10 UTC

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@nprofile…txev
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/115/548/564/845/874/154/original/38328044abff2d8a.png

2025-11-14 05:55:50 UTC

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@nprofile…wjds
We are making free software, but we do not work for free.
If a profit seeking entity has special needs, we are happy to talk to them about a support contract. Or they take our code and adapt/maintain it themselves.

2025-11-13 13:17:31 UTC

if you are not happy on your FIPS system with modern #curl treatment of TLSv1.3, why not simply refrain from using curl?
Or take an older version and maintain it yourself.💁🏻‍♂️
https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/19342

2025-11-10 06:51:16 UTC

Microsoft about to offer „AI Employees“.
Own email address and user account, participating in meetings and org charts.
AI Employees are paid on how many tokens they consume and can write themselves a new minivan.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/microsoft_agentic_users_a365/

2025-11-06 08:17:57 UTC

Homebrew is planning to enable Apple's SecTrust use in #curl. Nice to see them bringing this to their users!
#homebrew
https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/253125#issuecomment-3493798481

2025-10-31 06:44:16 UTC

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@nprofile…zwws So, we have an island of former sea lords with decades of lousy governments, nuclear missiles, and now no access to porn?

2025-10-29 14:19:51 UTC

Reminder: I do not speak American.🤷‍♂️
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/115/457/880/860/930/105/original/63d37fe9144c9eb3.png

2025-10-28 14:11:34 UTC

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@nprofile…4sdv what a bucket of sunshine we are today!🌞

2025-10-22 06:06:35 UTC

ubool64_t

2025-10-20 11:05:53 UTC

Had some weird errors this morning, then realised I had installed a macOS update over the weekend which reduced maxfiles back to 256. Thanks Apple!

2025-10-20 10:39:37 UTC

FYI: www.bassdrive.com/pop-up/ is working, in case you need some dnb on this monday.💁‍♂️

2025-08-28 09:04:04 UTC

With only 5 open issues in the curl project, it's becoming quite urgent to write new bugs!

2025-08-21 11:23:23 UTC

Fun with `pthread_cancel()` in curl. How I got that working and what challenges I encountered.
#curl #dns #pthreads
https://eissing.org/icing/posts/pthread_cancel/

2025-08-19 07:41:54 UTC

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@nprofile…r95k @nprofile…85uh A Python AI chatbot for f-strings, basically. 😌

2025-08-12 06:01:40 UTC

So, the github CEO saying „AI is here to stay“ is leaving.
GH degraded to just another part of the CoreAI ‚team‘ which is led by a former Meta executive.
*cough*
Did we already develop a FediGit or is that still on our todo list? Also, we need a curl screensaver that runs CI everywhere…
https://www.theverge.com/news/757461/microsoft-github-thomas-dohmke-resignation-coreai-team-transition

2025-07-28 07:01:31 UTC

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@nprofile…68km what are those units?

2025-07-28 05:54:48 UTC

„On average, around the world, about 6,000 lightning bolts occur between clouds and the Earth every minute.“
100 bolt/s, continuously 🤯
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250727.html

2025-07-17 05:16:05 UTC

„the AI‘s security reports are often incorrect“
It‘s not as bad as that.
They have *always*been incorrect.
Which saves a lot of work once I see the many-paged, bullet-pointed prose with lots of general truthy statements („water is often wet.“), my brain goes „Whatever!“ and passes on.💁🏻‍♂️

2025-07-15 05:22:38 UTC

Tell me you are cheap, stupid and don‘t care without telling me you are cheap, stupid and just don‘t care.💁🏻‍♂️
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/855/572/631/737/498/original/0f3a8f7b3158caf7.png

2025-07-14 13:41:32 UTC

I have only a very shallow opinion about SBOMs. They sound like a true bean counters' strategy:
If we'd only label everything meticulously enough, the chaos in the world will disappear.
Oh, and the ones writing the labels (or pass them on) will never lie, of course. They must not!
It's really that simple. 😌

2025-07-10 05:33:28 UTC

“one-acre solar farm produces as much energy as 100 acres of corn-based ethanol.”
The countries throttling renewables now (US, but also Germany) are just accelerating their decline. The laws of physics can not be lobbied.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment

2025-06-30 10:16:05 UTC

curl's handling of small transfers are now up to 30% faster (certain conditions apply)😌
Realistically, most of you will not really see this (that much). But should you need it, curl has become a little bit better.
https://github.com/icing/blog/blob/main/curl-req-perf.md
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/771/770/063/158/730/original/787e128595ec3bec.png

2025-06-13 11:16:30 UTC

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@nprofile…h77u Hmm...tricky.
Erfahrungsbasiertgenervtseinbevorespassiertigkeit.

2025-06-12 06:22:26 UTC

What I read about people coding with LLMs successfully is that they let the AI take a couple of shots, identify one that is a decent start and fix/add the right pieces.
Fair enough. But what I am missing here is how one identifies the „almost good“ part. How does one acquire that skill?
The AI definitely does not have it. So where does it come from?

2025-04-12 09:38:03 UTC

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@nprofile…68km I did not mean there were necessarily having sane idea. But it's easier to detect insanity in human coding than in AI.

2025-04-12 08:35:20 UTC

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With human code, you read and understand what they were thinking. You quickly know if these people were smart, reckless, ignorant or stupid.
With Vibe code, you do not get that. It most likely appears smart. But there are no intellects behind it.
Maybe it is possible to learn these models, like in „Ah, these lines are from BlaBla v4.51 which tends to drag in pieces from the North Korean Code Poisoning of 2027! I know how to fix those!“
But I doubt it.

2025-04-12 08:13:52 UTC

„What‘s your hourly rate for fixing code?“
„Human or Vibe code?“

2025-04-04 16:15:19 UTC

Sometimes I am wondering if I do software for free or in vain.💁🏻‍♂️
#worksbetteringerman

2025-04-02 12:07:59 UTC

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@nprofile…8yf4 Found a HTTP/1.2 somewhere? Explain...

2025-04-02 10:55:27 UTC

HTTP/8 is the result when you add support for all HTTP versions!👆

2025-03-18 07:50:57 UTC

Let‘s Encrypt describing their ACME profiles in detail:
‚classic‘: 90 days, all as before
‚tlsserver‘: 90 days, smaller certs, cut lean for its server role and modern clients
‚shortlived‘: ~6 days, otherwise like ‚tlsserver‘
If you have no idea what the mentioned TLS extensions are about, do *not* configure a profile. But if you do, use classic.
If you have a rough idea and serve modern clients, tlsserver cuts some bytes and the auth process is tighter.
https://letsencrypt.org/docs/profiles/

2025-03-14 05:51:19 UTC

Code AIs are getting better. 😌
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/ai-coding-assistant-refuses-to-write-code-tells-user-to-learn-programming-instead/

2025-03-10 08:36:03 UTC

This is *so* broken. https://pony.social/@luna/114134087099804076

2025-03-01 13:01:43 UTC

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@nprofile…4acq and extendable blades, scissors and a screwdriver.

2025-03-01 12:00:06 UTC

Tech of the Ancients
I have this incredible kitchen scale for over 20 years now. It has a swipeable screen and does not need recharging.
You put sth on it, then touch the screen with your finger and swipe right and can measure whatever you put in next.
I do not fully understand the math behind it and how it uses the gravitational fields and atom bonds. But it works reliably and it's always on. Truly magic.
It does not show news and weather, though.💁🏻‍♂️
#ancienttech
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/087/030/596/104/966/original/1da74e3d1720f839.jpg

2025-02-27 14:59:14 UTC

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@nprofile…2uzz @nprofile…z22s In curl, we use very short cables to make things faster. Tracketpacer's advice helps us a lot every day.🤗

2025-02-23 07:51:19 UTC

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@nprofile…cvj5 @nprofile…njn8 In the last 30 years I have seen little maintenance on closed source code.
Rewrites there are plenty. Everyone likes rewrites in an org. But maintaining production code over years, rarely.

2025-02-23 06:52:30 UTC

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@nprofile…cvj5 @nprofile…njn8
AI can apply existing coding knowledge, exfiltrated from training data, in correlation to a prompt. If you do not exceed its context token amount.
We see that in AI slops submitted to bug bounty programs. The AIs find cases where an internal function could be exploited due to missing checks. The checks are there, but the AI cannot remember seeing them.
That makes AIs useless for maintenance of code bases. But they can suggest a good hashtable implementation.

2025-02-18 09:04:21 UTC

Anyone has data on what network code drones run in Ukraine? (no guesses, please)

2025-02-15 08:12:07 UTC

Got contacted by a friend of my sister about a US family with a queer child that need to leave Washington. They seem to have Berlin on their mind.
Anyone got an idea where they can turn to for advice and help?

2025-02-13 08:17:20 UTC

We in the curl team believe in the Swedish Way of Life:
Hard coding in your underwear, drinking black coffee with its own event horizon, listening to ABBA all day long.
(I might have mixed up some details - I‘m still learning.💁🏻‍♂️)

2025-02-12 10:13:05 UTC

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@nprofile…kxk4 It's fun to speculate!
I would guess that apart from the inferior performance in curl, server stacks have been fine tuning their implementations over the last years for other TLS stacks.
Probably not worth for them to invest in the OpenSSL unique thing when no benefits can be foreseen.

2025-02-11 15:46:05 UTC

These old movies where the good guys manage to get the information about the corrupt politicians to the press and that solved the problem...
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/986/025/875/541/472/original/3201851b3a18f1bd.png

2024-11-12 13:18:03 UTC

#london
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/470/174/477/295/824/original/1891ffda16209a5c.jpeg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/470/174/829/056/462/original/6b4f85d46ec2890d.jpeg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/470/175/593/547/279/original/bfa414371b905d03.jpeg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/470/175/988/598/160/original/9e46f586d760fa9e.jpeg

2024-10-29 08:25:21 UTC

I expect the kids ringing my door at halloween to not be surprised when they need to watch an ad first. 💁🏻‍♂️🎃

2024-10-25 07:59:09 UTC

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@npub1rml…xa6t It‘s invite only. You didn‘t know?

2024-08-19 07:07:23 UTC

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@npub150t…ravx you want `|` as a new option char?

2024-08-19 06:56:40 UTC

Ah, the curl feature window closed again and the pressure to invent new options ceases.😌

2024-03-12 08:24:22 UTC

Obvious: keyboards should have all the keys on one side, so that we can type everything with one hand comfortably.

2023-09-01 07:08:05 UTC

Remember: always rewind the video before closing the browser tab!