cholling

Fediverse nomad (but without nomadic identity, sadly) roaming from server to server and software to software until I find something that just works. Developer of #python, #java, #go, #csharp, #fsharp, and, many years ago, #prolog. Interested in #retrocomputing, #permacomputing, and #solarpunk.

Public Key

npub1sq7xcypftcagh3aj8x5kpwywxh2j5pmra4cf03rqhtsvj9ucnydq7kn253

NIP-05 Address

cholling@bytes-programming-dev.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgq0rvzq54uw5tc7ern2tqhz8rt4f2qa376uyhc3st4cxfz7vfjxspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsaazyaf

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Last Notes

2026-07-31 18:31:02 UTC

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@nprofile…q6qh Thanks! Though the fact that you didn't think I was joking when I said they put you in BSD jail if you don't have a valid BSD license really worries me. 😆

2026-07-31 14:10:59 UTC

I've been trying to explore the world outside GNU/Linux (or, as I've recently taken to calling it, "Sexual predator userspace plus egotistical botlicker kernel"). Naturally, the first stop on this road is the fragmented world of #BSD.
I won't lie, the experience is very reminiscent of running Linux in the 1990s: hardware support is dicey at best, it's very rare to find commercial software that will run on it, and the guiding philosophy seems to be that user-friendliness is an undesirable quality that will only result in The Wrong People using your software. Nevertheless, I'm committed to giving it a fair trial.
So far my favorite variant is #OpenBSD, especially for servers. I like the fact that it's secure by default, rather than being a hacker's dream out of the box that you then have to figure out how to secure. But I have questions.
- One of the #FreeBSD features I've heard touted a lot is "jails," which I gather means "like Docker but harder to use". But this doesn't seem to be a feature in OpenBSD. Is there something equivalent in the OpenBSD world, perhaps under another name?
- The only *BSD that I know for sure has banned LLM contributions is #NetBSD. What, if any, are the LLM policies of OpenBSD and FreeBSD?
- Has anybody tried audio production in BSD? What's the experience like? It took years for Linux to get to the point where you could more or less do serious audio work, and I hate to think of regressing back to "if you buy this one particular sound card they stopped making in 1998 and recompile the kernel with a dodgy patch someone posted to USENET you can maybe kind of play a .WAV file".
Thanks in advance for your help!
(I have been informed by an anonymous source that "BSD jails" are in fact what they put you in if you use the software without a valid BSD license. I am not sure this is correct.)

2026-07-26 20:44:57 UTC

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@nprofile…v9vp I guess a better question would have been "are there any small companies in any industry who might be hiring software developers?"

2026-07-26 16:06:07 UTC

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@nprofile…v9vp Sure, I'll allow it. Are there any small hardware companies sans delusions of grandeur?

2026-07-26 13:03:26 UTC

Are there any small tech companies who are okay with being small tech companies? It seems like every tech company either wants to become the next Google, Meta, or Amazon, or wants to get bought out by the current Google, Meta, or Amazon.

2026-07-15 20:18:23 UTC

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@nprofile…dyu0 sure, THEY get HRT.

2026-07-10 16:45:01 UTC

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@nprofile…dyu0 That's what I said. However, the company probably uses ATS software that scours your LinkedIn profile looking for magic words and phrases known but to Claude (or whatever nightmare chatbox they use), which means even if I had a LinkedIn profile my chances of getting the job would be low.

2026-07-10 16:39:04 UTC

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@nprofile…dyu0 It's a required field. The form won't submit without it.

2026-07-10 16:32:51 UTC

Several months ago I deleted my LinkedIn account in disgust. That site is nothing but AI slop and corporate grind culture posturing. Now, however, I find that many online job application pages have "LinkedIn URL" as a required field. Should I just take that as a sign that the job isn't for me?

2026-07-01 19:22:11 UTC

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@nprofile…vsjg OK maybe I misunderstood. I thought you were saying Go ignored years of usability research (i.e. by requiring lots of boilerplate to make up for missing features) but maybe you meant it ignored research about fancy features (i.e. dependent types) instead.
If anyone else knows of studies about which programming languages or language features are easier to learn, especially for beginners, please send them my way!

2026-07-01 19:12:08 UTC

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@nprofile…vsjg Do you have any good sources or starting points for programming language research specifically targeting usability?

2026-05-19 13:38:12 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0 I used to live on the Gulf Coast, and hearing people talk about "both coasts" was endlessly annoying. Not only are you reducing the United States to its coastal regions, you don't even include all the coasts!

2026-05-14 16:56:26 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua I'd do it, but I could never be Prime Minister. I'm easily divided by other ministers.

2026-04-29 12:36:36 UTC

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@nprofile…u7p7 I'm missing some context. What is GitHub gaslighting about now?

2026-04-06 15:22:02 UTC

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@nprofile…z6kv reminds me of the joke that so many astronauts were from Ohio because they wanted to get as far away from Ohio as possible

2026-01-29 21:36:45 UTC

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@nprofile…vkph Yes. If you really try, you can do it in half the time.

2025-12-04 12:07:09 UTC

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@nprofile…wqs2 @nprofile…ng7a One of the things that disappoints me about the Fediverse in general is the assumption that, because corporate social media is fragmented, the Fediverse should be too. The only reason we have separate Fedi servers for pictures, video, microblogging, macroblogging, book recommendations, and discussion forums is because Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Medium, Goodreads, and Reddit exist as separate apps, and all we could think was, "What if [corporate app], but federated?"

2025-10-28 21:48:01 UTC

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@nprofile…sqrl Maybe, but "Mississippi Herpes Monkeys" is one hell of a band name.

2025-07-26 20:06:42 UTC

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@nprofile…s6x2 Alameda didn't survive the Eugenics Wars

2025-06-20 11:17:46 UTC

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@nprofile…gdcp @nprofile…vdjy I heard they finally dropped the phone number requirement?

2025-06-02 16:59:06 UTC

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@nprofile…t3wn @nprofile…f9l8 They have nonexistent brains. They're statistical models, and they're not optimized for accuracy, but for similarity to their (completely unvetted) training set. When they output plausible-sounding nonsense, they're not "hallucinating." They're doing exactly what they were designed to do!

2025-05-14 12:58:45 UTC

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@nprofile…5zd4 But Bluesky is decentralized! If it goes bad, they can just move to one of the other ATProto servers, like... hang on, it's here somewhere...

2025-02-10 15:15:25 UTC

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@nprofile…0tvd "Vim is hard to exit" is the "How about that airline food?" of Unix humor.

2025-01-28 19:39:24 UTC

For years I've been hearing that "One day AI will be smarter than humans and we'll all be doomed."
"Nonsense," I said. "AI is very stupid, and not getting noticeably smarter." And I was right.
But I didn't think about the fact that there were two ways that prophecy could be fulfilled.

2025-01-24 09:27:35 UTC

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@nprofile…ug6l Well, a "blockchain expert," so nothing of value was lost.

2025-01-15 12:15:38 UTC

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@nprofile…yu7x Degrees centigrade per... cubic gram???

2024-12-27 13:20:13 UTC

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@nprofile…cl5w This presupposes we actually even want AGI.

2024-11-26 13:27:50 UTC

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@nprofile…pam3 "Protect the market from us!"

2024-11-19 10:23:55 UTC

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@nprofile…23v4 @nprofile…pam3 Analog chips absolutely exist. Op-amps, for example. Chips are just containers for transistors, and we were using transistors for analog signals before we used them for digital.

2024-10-28 11:48:19 UTC

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@npub1w4s…pjt2 @npub1xth…u6wq Back in my day we rewrote all our code from scratch for every project and didn't use ANY dependencies!

2024-10-22 09:47:57 UTC

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@npub1qdm…f00z Neat! Is the source available?

2024-09-16 09:26:19 UTC

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@npub1y5h…7m3c oh, snap

2024-08-02 09:47:59 UTC

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@npub198t…hasj Best I can figure is the CONTENTS of those folders will be deleted, but the folders themselves will not. But that's not how they phrased it.

2024-06-29 14:53:38 UTC

Hello again! Just migrated from Mastodon to Mastodon't.