random strings

I use a bunch of email addresses; you should too.

A bank is a business, but it is a highly regulated business with an obligation to serve customers fairly.

The key to avoiding spyware is to not use any of the things that bring it in.

This essay began as an attempt to explain Progression Fantasy and LitRPG.

We watched the first three episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy before rejecting it as Not For Us, primarily on the basis of the writing.

Words are defined so that we can communicate effectively.

Excessive chaos produces a desire for order.

Whenever a system attempts to predict what a user of the system will want or do next or means, the failure case generates the most noticeable immediate problems.

An extract from George O.

People are very fond of the Shirley argument.

Given that: No copyright can be claimed on work created by an LLM Many open source projects require contributors to sign a release of some form - a certificate of origin or license agreement - that states that the contribution is copyrighted to the contri…

I have a morning routine which would have seemed awfully complicated to the teenaged me, and is probably ridiculously streamlined to the me reading this entry in 2036.

It has been over 1111 days since we switched from Oracle’s database to Postgresql at work.

(This entry is now on its third revision.

No, this isn’t an usurper hijacking the blog.

I am good at making ice cream.

This is how I’m dealing with music playback in the house as of July 2025.

Since you’re interested in not breaking things, you should be running Debian Stable.

Every complex problem is a dependency management problem.

I had assumed that when certbot does an http authentication of a domain name as part of getting Let’s Encrypt to issue or renew a cert, it would do so by touching the appropriately named file in http://domain.name.tld/.well-known/acme-challenge, waiting f…

When 3 of 4 disks in a ZFS pool die at the same time, it is not the disks.

Hey academics!

Start with an Android phone with sufficient storage capability and a decent DAC/headphone amplifier.

When the Let’s Encrypt certbot says it failed and it was probably a firewall issue – yes, it’s probably a firewall issue.

Specifically, a wiki which uses a non-database backend.

There is a new software technology.

New paper: LLMs don’t do formal reasoning.

The Linux kernel doesn’t consider routing to be a separate process, so it can eat lots of CPU capacity and still be at a load average of 0.

Self: you have managed to make some cert renewals dependent on IPv6 connectivity through to the main server.

Many organizations claim to be following Agile in some way.

Repeat the following metaphor until you internalize it: Security is the skin of an organization, IT infrastructure is the bones.

A nominally 8-wide LEGO Speed Champions vehicle is actually 8.5 studs wide, due to the overhang of the wheel arches.

Here is the Agile Manifesto: We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

There’s a game which you have probably played in some form, possibly not even knowing that it was a game.

About two weeks ago I decided to use parts from a suddenly unused desktop to upgrade the living room media server.

In the spirit of the Joel Scale for software dev, I propose an initial version of a scale for IT and operations folks. 3 points: all production infrastructure is redeployable in exactly the current form with a well-documented, automated system.

My RSI prevention strategy involves change: I use three different keyboards, four or five pointing devices, and move around to different places.

I have almost 30 years of professional experience as a sysadmin.

My two most common issues in not posting to this blog: start writing a post, discover that it is ten thousand words and still hasn’t made the point properly muse about writing a post, wonder whether even I want to remember the subject of consideration This

In May of 2022, I made a few predictions about US politics Here’s the meat: Assuming that the opinion is issued substantially as-is, I will make some predictions about 2023.

I had thought that ‘pareidolia’ referred exclusively to the human tendency to see human faces everywhere – any time you see two dots or circles and a line below them, boom :) it’s a face.

If your Debian system is suddenly very slow to login – like, 25 to 90 seconds of apparent inactivity on every new ssh – it’s not DNS.

Some people play Wordle to get their brains moving in the morning.

This is what I would like you to know about my mother: She didn’t like what people were doing to the world; she found some ways she could be effective at making things better; she did them.

In the spirit of underkill home network and overkill home network Internet: Verizon FIOS terminating in their optical network terminal.

If a service is being provided by an LLM, one of the following cases applies: it was always bullshit1 the people in charge can’t tell the difference the people in charge don’t care about the difference LLMs are bullshit generators.

I’m going to tell you the secret (it’s not a secret) to building reliable, operable, debuggable infrastructure.

Let’s take a second to remember that copyright is the reason ~every child doesn’t have access to ~every book ever written. – holmesworcester at Hacker News -30-

Previously: In the office, my desktop feeds an Apple USB-C DAC ($9, no sale needed) to an optoisolator to a NAD 712 stereo receiver.

If you have some sort of data or power cable that you tend to plug and unplug frequently, consider putting a sacrificial extender cable in between.