Howard Chu @ Symas

CTO Symas Corp., Chief Architect OpenLDAP Project, Musician

Public Key

npub1tt4j2zeswksjh5z7zmy283qd4yd920afy9j28xg45wsxzhl9rpjqrex9ud

NIP-05 Address

hyc@mastodon-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs946e9pvc8tgft6p0pdj9rcsx6jxj4875jze9rny268grptlj3seqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdh0529

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1tt4j2zeswksjh5z7zmy283qd4yd920afy9j28xg45wsxzhl9rpjqrex9ud

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Last Notes

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

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."

2025-03-19 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

2025-01-14 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 17:29:06 UTC

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

2024-12-11 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

2024-09-20 23:17:45 UTC

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@npub1ekx…puy8 and he's the runt!

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?

2024-04-29 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

2024-03-15 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

2024-02-29 00:55:05 UTC

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

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 10:14:59 UTC

A reminder: the core principle behind Free Software is that anyone can use it. If you modify it, enhance it, etc., you must give your users the same rights you received.
"Open Source" is one step removed from Public Domain - anyone can do whatever they want with it, with no obligation to share it under the same terms they themselves received it. Open source is a con, perpetrated by greedy corporations on selfless developers.
Building proprietary products on open source is basically theft.

2024-01-31 23:16:59 UTC

Don't buy appliances with touch-sensitive controls if you have #cats. For me, it was just an LED desk lamp, no biggie. But can easily be worse:
https://mastodon.social/@dkellyj@mastodon.ie/111852942156651373

2024-01-24 16:10:26 UTC

Digging up an older vid, from 2022-12-08 : mining Monero on my new (at the time) Android car radio
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/811/786/465/788/595/original/85cb95799a36247d.mp4

2024-01-19 21:45:01 UTC

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@npub1alm…57vz NBC said 15 hospitals still open, more recent update from MSF says only 13. https://msf.org.uk/article/gaza-were-running-out-hospitals

2024-01-16 20:42:42 UTC

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@npub1t5c…zuy7 clearly a mad genius, no question :P

2024-01-16 20:06:02 UTC

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@npub1t5c…zuy7 I could prob use that, both of my cats tend to hang around on my lap or hovering around my display when I'm working. But most likely they'd make themselves scarce when they realize I want them near...

2024-01-11 21:38:25 UTC

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@npub14vz…nweu does it still run Atari BASIC and have all the other functions of an Atari 400?

2023-12-28 22:13:52 UTC

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@npub16y3…5wy8 yep, got the lichee pi, running fine

2023-12-24 11:55:01 UTC

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We've relied on this property in the past, to prove to an installation that the database corruption they were experiencing wasn't an LMDB bug - it turned out to be a faulty DRAM DIMM in their server. Without LMDB's deterministic write behavior, convincing someone of these cases would be a lot more difficult.
But proving the presence of a bug and narrowing down its cause are really two different tasks, and thus requires two different types of logging.

2023-12-24 11:52:20 UTC

There's an art to debugging with print statements. You need to show enough to be able to identify problems happening, without being so verbose as to overwhelm with useless noise. When #LMDB is built with debug logging enabled, the output can be too voluminous to sift thru.
But it shows exactly what the code is doing, in such a way that you can parse the log and rerun the exact same operations, and get an identical database as a result.

2023-12-21 18:45:11 UTC

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@npub1t5e…nx96 Щедрик, щедрик, щедрівочка,
Прилетіла ластівочка, ...

2023-12-15 12:58:29 UTC

Hey, browser devs - quit truncating the "www." prefix in URLs you display in your URL bar. You're not saving anything important by hiding that. ... and I just wasted a couple minutes waiting for a foo.com to timeout because it really wanted www.foo.com ...

2023-12-13 08:42:51 UTC

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@npub1rml…xa6t when a billion had twelve zeroes, what word was used for 9 zeroes?

2023-10-08 04:26:47 UTC

Timelines and following hashtags is still a stupid way to interact with people. The Usenet model of topics is still the better model. You can't build meaningful thoughts from a firehose of non-sequiturs.

2023-10-03 03:06:51 UTC

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@npub1njz…q92f Buddha redeems for valuable cash prizes!

2023-09-18 09:41:51 UTC

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@npub1a56…jgz2 true, anything we refactor in there now is likely to have no effect or negative effect.

2023-09-17 06:51:36 UTC

Hash bang slash, bin s h,
c d slash dot config
When you know the keys to type
You can code without the hype
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RW3nDRmu6k&t=254

2023-09-17 01:22:27 UTC

With #Ahsoka airing, I figured I should watch The Clone Wars to get more of her back-story. I watched all of season 1 but frankly it was an unbingeable slog. It's not really grabbing me, so I only watch 1 or 2 episodes at a time.
After season 1 I skipped to the end, or end of S6. So I see Yoda learning how to become a Force ghost. Cool, but how come Anakin became one, he never trained? I guess Yoda might have taught Obi-Wan at least. #StarWars #clonewars

2023-09-16 07:18:42 UTC

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@npub1v4t…w5q2 chump change for him

2023-09-15 16:22:17 UTC

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@npub1wdv…hnkd yeah, being the outsider sucks. I've had similar experiences for most of my career, but it's more like "hey, the typical solution everyone uses sucks because of x,y,z and my solution is better" and getting largely ignored for the first few years. But eventually people start recognizing that "yeah, x,y, and z actually do suck" and start coming around. It takes persistence and years of patience to beat entrenched, established groupthink.

2023-09-15 16:13:19 UTC

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@npub1wdv…hnkd six months to years later - prime "I told you so" opportunities.

2023-09-15 16:08:23 UTC

Everything relevant I have to tell you on this topic could be written concisely in a 500char toot, but I'm going to make you waste your time watching my video instead. https://mastodon.social/@thelinuxEXP/111070011303868097

2023-09-11 16:55:50 UTC

Seeking opinions...
One of my old projects, RTMPdump, relies on OpenSSL for some crypto primitives, but the APIs it uses have been deprecated in 1.1 and newer. I'm wondering whether and how to support the newer versions.
Since we're supporting an ancient proprietary protocol, adopting new APIs to allow supporting newer encryption schemes is irrelevant. Avoiding weaknesses in older ciphers is also irrelevant, we have to use what Adobe used, and nothing else.

2023-09-11 13:26:03 UTC

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@npub1ypl…53vh ranks up there with touch-sensitive lamps

2023-09-11 13:23:47 UTC

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@npub1v4t…w5q2 should've used "roles"

2023-09-11 12:13:23 UTC

#LMDB data store, concurrent cache, etc., for #Eclipse https://rdf4j.org/javadoc/latest/org/eclipse/rdf4j//sail/lmdb/package-summary.html

2023-09-10 21:45:16 UTC

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@npub1tmy…gu0h webrings again?

2023-09-10 20:14:34 UTC

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@npub16mz…uzxf I worked on the Space Shuttle, which technically is not a rocket, it's more of a space plane. So not really a rocket scientist...

2023-09-10 07:03:22 UTC

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@npub1xve…lvum remake as in, identical performance as original?
I'd kinda like to see what clock rate you could hit with a 68020 on a modern silicon process. I suppose the ColdFire family is a hint already.
Might as well do Sun3x, with 68030...

2023-09-09 18:02:50 UTC

This is a tune that for some reason I thought I learned off the Atlantic Fiddles CD many years ago, but recently when I dug up that recording I didn't find this tune on there, so now I have no idea where I got it from. Anyone else recognize it? It seems it's originally a highland pipe tune.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/036/500/376/702/965/original/1a0ee04e9e189b03.mp4

2023-09-08 17:17:53 UTC

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@npub177j…34u5 really amazing compared to other scifi films & tv shows from the same time.

2023-09-08 16:46:48 UTC

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who could possibly have seen this coming... https://mastodon.social/@cynicalsecurity@bsd.network/111030157657101339

2023-09-01 13:19:29 UTC

Aoine Shona daoibh!
星期五快樂!
Бақытты Жұма!
Happy Friday!
*this toot void where prohibited

2023-08-31 03:50:39 UTC

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@npub1qnn…w7ad Aside: I'm having a hard time accepting 18MB vs 2.7MB as an acceptable cost of not managing your own memory...

2023-08-31 03:42:24 UTC

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@npub1qnn…w7ad yeah, relative offset can avoid some of the reloc hassle but gets unwieldy for deeply nested fields.

2023-08-31 03:39:46 UTC

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@npub1qnn…w7ad
foo* recptr = map_alloc(sizeof(foo) + strlen(rec1.name) + strlen(rec1.phone) + 2);
recptr->name = (char *)(recptr+1);
strcpy(recptr->name, rec1.name);
recptr->phone = recptr->name + strlen(recptr->name)+1;
strcpy(recptr->phone, rec1.phone);
So recptr lives inside the fixedmap address space, and contains all of rec1's data in one contiguous chunk of memory. Then the record can be used directly from the map, with no deser cost.

2023-08-30 16:15:44 UTC

An #LMDB wrapper for #Racket https://libraries.io/racket/lmdb

2023-08-29 14:56:45 UTC

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@npub1e7r…uf8g Too late now, @npub12c5…509u snagged it ;)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/973/485/140/036/793/original/fd47bb75ee10428f.png

2023-08-27 17:57:59 UTC

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@npub1z5c…458a I'm not on twitter any more, just here.

2023-08-27 16:29:30 UTC

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@npub1324…c2vq @npub17wv…wey8 too bad it's also same here in Ireland. I think all the plumbing/electrical codes here are copied from UK.

2023-08-27 16:12:42 UTC

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@npub1e7r…uf8g
Congratulations!
Amazon.com User!
You've been selected! Here is your free Amazon gift card!
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Looking for a claim code? Just click to have your balance applied to your account!

2023-08-27 16:06:41 UTC

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@npub1ua7…rrg3 same here. Let us know what you settle on.

2023-08-27 06:46:30 UTC

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@npub1pc2…eqwt all they needed to do was strap cameras to a couple dolphins and set them loose in the lake for a while...

2023-08-27 01:07:04 UTC

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@npub1tds…lfgr the way timezones work, you can make an excuse to post #caturday pics for a 48hr span anyway.

2023-08-26 21:19:52 UTC

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@npub1027…nw6k @npub16jp…glz4 lanarkite / LK99 ftw

2023-08-26 20:40:40 UTC

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@npub1t5m…9guy sounds like life forcing you to take a break

2023-08-26 20:36:22 UTC

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@npub1t5m…9guy I never got them before, but have had a few of those weird kaleidoscope effects the past couple years. What triggers yours?

2023-08-26 20:30:57 UTC

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@npub1unp…jzef well.... cats excel at kneading...

2023-08-26 20:08:02 UTC

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@npub139x…5sws Ceapann Mastodon go bhfuil do phost i Rúisis

2023-08-24 04:31:17 UTC

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@npub1axa…z08a but they're happy to completely break the arc of Luke Skywalker's story. Like, no big deal...

2023-08-22 21:44:22 UTC

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@npub1yta…ayt9 @npub1u69…qfp9 as always, if your tech isn't strong enough to protect the bad guys, it's not strong enough to protect the good guys either.

2023-08-19 23:26:41 UTC

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@npub19m8…6akz if it's not reproducible, then it's a worthless paper. If code is required for reproduction attempts, then it must be published alongside the paper.

2023-08-19 01:33:46 UTC

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@npub1js3…ntcw Oh man, the Probe was such a sweet car. Too bad the Mustang crowd in Ford felt threatened and they killed it.

2023-08-19 01:06:01 UTC

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@npub1js3…ntcw hear hear! I had at least 6 years coding experience with no modem at all, writing programs on HP calculators and trying to cram as much as possible into 49 steps of program memory...

2023-08-17 00:42:11 UTC

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@npub17wk…uzqr it was clear from day 1 that the DMCA was harmful. It should be entirely repealed.

2023-08-15 19:37:24 UTC

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@npub1m9h…7spx It was more obvious with csh's .login. It still bugs me that bash rose to such dominance when csh / tcsh did so many things better.

2023-08-15 18:30:39 UTC

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And there we go - google search has torpedoed itself https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/110894818243613681

2023-08-15 18:24:05 UTC

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@npub1ulx…qstt if it's just as unupgradeable as a laptop, might as well just buy laptops - the built in battery means you'll never lose your work to a power outage.

2023-08-15 18:14:29 UTC

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@npub1447…fn50 not seeing how Christ has anything to do with them

2023-08-15 10:15:17 UTC

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@npub1fng…5vvt happens most of the time - that's why OSS is a scam. There should only ever have been GPL. The Free Software movement was co-opted and sabotaged by commercial enterprises.

2023-08-15 09:59:31 UTC

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@npub1324…c2vq This is why "permissive" software licenses suck: proprietary projects can profit off your work and never contribute anything back. If you're starting new work and have a choice, stick with GPL.
The OpenLDAP license is permissive but that choice was made long ago and without copyright assignments, so can't be changed.

2023-08-14 14:11:59 UTC

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@npub1aza…c2m8 closing and swapping files seems your best bet. That's really only a couple syscalls, while copying the data could take substantial time. On non-Windows you could open the new env first and use it immediately, renaming later. Windows unfortunately can't rename an open file.

2023-08-14 01:43:57 UTC

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@npub1m0w…j0et sensors detect a punch line looming in the distance

2023-08-13 21:00:55 UTC

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Blue laser with starlight diffraction lens
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/884/319/619/523/537/original/02e1d8bad3125cc3.mp4

2023-08-13 20:58:44 UTC

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Blue and green lasers adjacent
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/884/311/203/446/338/original/9466a86686e7f672.mp4

2023-08-13 20:57:49 UTC

Playing with a blue laser in the rain - the shorter wavelength is reflected more strongly by water, so the drops sparkle as they pass thru the beam. A green laser shows the effect much more weakly, and a red laser doesn't show at all.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/884/306/636/944/898/original/c65d1e9c716ebb72.mp4

2023-08-13 20:22:05 UTC

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@npub1vnq…4v4u yeah, a pretty weird gaff. And a throwaway line to begin with, weird choice to include it.

2023-08-13 19:01:51 UTC

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@npub159e…exyl aka "Computer - disengage safety protocols!"

2023-08-13 15:55:29 UTC

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@npub1yz8…y56j out of sight, out of mind

2023-08-12 18:34:44 UTC

I heard a pipe rattling when my washing machine ran, so set a ladder to check things out in the attic. Wrapped some insulation around the washer's supply hose, then came down to listen for any effect. Meanwhile, this little guy with his short stubby legs managed to climb the ladder. Still dunno how he even reached past the top rung. Of course he couldn't climb down again. #caturday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/878/081/531/039/908/original/b9f995baae1ae883.jpg

2023-08-12 15:43:26 UTC

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@npub1f6z…saax would be great. Doesn't 10 years take them to Captain Kirk era? I suppose it'd be cool to see his promotion and first time out as captain.

2023-08-12 13:44:40 UTC

Hint: wrapping a GUI around a complex commandline tool doesn't inherently make it more user-friendly.

2023-08-12 00:52:54 UTC

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@npub19qn…6760 hmm, why not make products register themselves?

2023-08-11 19:50:08 UTC

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@npub1638…ttsp huh I thought this was supposed to be a parody acct.

2023-08-11 19:27:27 UTC

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@npub1ema…z20p @npub1dzv…v0c3 have watched too many man vs machine movies to know that'll work until it doesn't...

2023-08-11 18:05:09 UTC

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@npub1t5m…9guy and to think - I got permabanned a week ago for tweeting that traitors should be hanged. As if there's anything controversial about the fact that traitors get executed.

2023-08-11 13:47:38 UTC

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@npub1rgu…xq0u great, now make my banking apps quit checking for an unlocked bootloader and refusing to run.

2023-08-11 09:46:56 UTC

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@npub1dzj…7n2l the first venture capitalists came about under monarchies, didn't they?

2023-08-11 05:21:05 UTC

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@npub1a56…jgz2 yeah, seems like the initial team fooled themselves. And of course, any interesting properties they saw were actually due to impurities, not the actual substance they worked so long to create.

2023-08-11 01:01:48 UTC

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@npub186s…54uq 3 years later, July 1985, you could buy an Atari ST with 8MHz 68000, 512KB RAM, and a 640x400 monochrome monitor for $800 (list price). Another year later you could get it with a whopping 1MB RAM and internal floppy drive for $1000. It made a decent X Windows workstation, as well as a good programmer's machine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST:

2023-08-10 23:48:25 UTC

Hackers love breaking into M$ Active Directory. Use #OpenLDAP instead.

2023-08-10 22:51:19 UTC

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@npub14n5…vyxp as always, anyone who tells you biometrics are the future of authentication doesn't know anything about biometrics or authentication...