finally!!
https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/form-http-methods

so I knew google was fucking up ublock origin badly with the recent manifestv3 shitshow, but apparently that's not the only reason firefox is better at blocking: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox

I'm looking for new technical consulting and contracting projects.

More details here: https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/looking-for-new-projects

If you've got any David-shaped problems you'd like help on, drop me a line (e.g. here, at david@drmaciver.com, book a call at https://calendly.com/drmaciver/consulting-intro).

This description of Apple today by @viticci perfectly captures my feelings. Using Apple products is still great, but developing for their platforms isn't what it used to be. https://www.macstories.net/linked/the-slow-decline-of-the-apple-cult/

This whole series is worth reading.

RE: https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112972404873929719

Interesting notes from Paul Gauthier on how asking an LLM to return code wrapped in a JSON object can result in a quality reduction compared to asking for that code in a less complex format such as fenced code Markdown blocks https://aider.chat/2024/08/14/code-in-json.html

(Cross-posted from my blog: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Aug/16/llms-are-bad-at-returning-code-in-json/)

Any recommendations for a massage therapist in Somerville-ish? Near Davis/Porter/Magoun is ideal but not required. And ideally someone who is at least somewhat Covid cautious or is willing to come to my house and wear a mask. #SomervilleMA #cambridgema

I was doing an activity with my youngest and then told him I had to go back to work. As I walked over to my laptop he said “Okay, go touch your letters daddy.” which is such an amazing burn.

https://www.zen-browser.app/

It’s cool to see more investment and innovation in browsers outside of big tech (especially with a non-Chromium engine), though without knowing more about the team and funding behind this, hard for me to want to invest any time and energy to try out.

Bike component maker Shimano issued a software update to the pro cycling teams who use its wireless gear shifters after researchers found that hackers can spoof or jam the shifters' signals to sabotage riders. Consumers get the patch later this month. https://www.wired.com/story/shimano-wireless-bicycle-shifter-jamming-replay-attacks/

This reminds me of one time we were given vi access to a specific file via sudoers, and we very much abused the crap out of this by escaping into a shell in vim.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@miah/112955642467835465

A lot of people are unclear why so many #PatreonCreators are quite so upset at the recent news about #Patreon. This is largely because what is being reported in the news is the business with the 30% Apple tax, which only affects iOS users.

The thing creators are upset about is that Patreon is SHUTTING DOWN two of its three offerings. Creators who were using one of those two are now screwed. How screwed they are depends on how and why they were using the services being discontinued, and ranges from "extremely inconvenienced" right on up to "existential threat to their creative endeavor".

One of the services Patreon offered – the one I use – basically has no alternative. None of the other crowdfunding platforms support it.

Indeed, a lot of creators were stuck using Patreon *because* it did things differently from other crowdfunding platforms, and it is BECAUSE it did things differently, that Apple is requiring them to give up those services.

1/n

Seeing like an SRE: https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/seeing-sre-site-reliability-engineering-high-modernism

Knowledge of a specific software system is metis, rather than techne. This is why there is a learning curve when we start working on a new system, and why we don’t put our new teammates on call right away. More standardisation in infrastructure, better runbooks and so on are the software equivalent of dredging the shipping channel and putting markers on obstructions — they can somewhat reduce the amount of metis we need to have, but not eliminate the need for a local pilot entirely.

To return to where I started this article, this is why generic checklists always fall a bit flat, and why it’s very difficult to run a thorough production readiness review for a system that you aren’t deeply familiar with. Both of these are an attempt to substitute techne for metis, which just doesn’t work.

This, perhaps, is the source of some of the antipathy that some old-school sysadmins have for SRE (as exemplified by the reaction to Todd Underwood’s LISA 2013 talk, PostOps: A Non-Surgical Tale of Software, Fragility, and Reliability). SRE is seen as a high modernist project, intent on scientifically managing their systems, all techne and no metis; all SLOs and Kubernetes and no systems knowledge and craft. That view is not entirely wrong. Some in the SRE movement do see it that way — things like consulting SRE teams, SRE software platforms, SLOs, and Kubernetes are popular for a reason, and they do have their uses. But call it what you will – craft, metis – specific systems knowledge isn’t going away anytime soon. SRE or sysadmin, metis is the one aspect of our jobs that we are unlikely to ever automate away.

One of my submodule remotes switched from master to main and boy did git not like that one bit. Not sure if it was exacerbated by submodules or if plain git would’ve been similarly affected, but wound up needing to do some remote juggling to get the repo in a sensible state again.

So cool! A one-pixel-wide font that exploits subpixels.

(Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/slGDHG3oyt cc @elliotjaystocks @glennf)

the debugging manifesto poster I've been talking about is finally available for sale! You can get it here for $20 US + shipping: https://store.wizardzines.com/products/poster-debugging-manifesto

it was redesigned and riso printed by Inner Loop Press and I'm SO delighted with how it turned out (https://www.innerloop.press/)

Seeking help from an IT security person - please share!

I run an open source, federated event sharing site, #Gathio (https://gath.io). A few days ago, it was victim to a ransomware attack that deleted the database. I need a few hours of someone's time (paid of course!) to sit with me and go through my security configuration ASAP.

Sometimes, running open source, free, community services _sucks_.

Do you know any cool people that live in Tacoma, Washington?

Or any interesting groups/organizations? Any queer-friendly spaces not revolving around alcohol?

I've got a friend that's surrounded by cis-het toxic masculinity & looking for a reprieve.

#Tacoma #Washington

More and more apps are single-window and not documented based and that upsets me. I've noticed this more with Electron but not confident enough to single them out. Example: I want to view multiple channels at once in Discord. Please, make your apps support multiple windows!

I'm not going to link to Threads often, but this is Vivian Jenna Wilson, the daughter that Elon Musk hates and wants to destroy, talking about Walter Issacson's hagiography.

https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/C-jgBobR1Bh

#ElonMusk #fascism