@groxx@hachyderm.io cover
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

groxx

@[email protected]

Bipedal and featherless.

I have done a ton of Go and Python and Java through 15 years of work, and a bit of Rust for fun, really enjoy distributed systems and concurrency and I have Opinions™ and Ideas™ but I'll refrain from shouting them into the void.

I'm pretty sparse with toots and boosts, and I promise not to flood your feed because I'm not fond of it myself. (Corollary: if I unfollow you, it doesn't mean I don't like your posts! I just read literally everything, and can't handle volume)

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@mdiluz@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar mdiluz , to random

Time for a alternatives thread, for no particular reason.

I've actually been looking into all available options for the past few weeks for other reasons, so here's a thread to share what I've found.

In particular I'm looking for stuff like:

  • Data sovereignty
  • Strong moderation tools
  • Wide platform support

Hopefully this gives everyone else some ideas too, and feel free to chime in with corrections, suggestions or anything else!

groxx ,
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@mtothevizzah @mdiluz the good news is that you haven't missed anything - Matrix is in pretty much exactly the same state as 5 years ago

@Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar Impossible_PhD , to random

One of the hardest things to remember in these times is that while things are falling apart, they are not falling apart because you're not trying hard enough. They're falling apart because the structures of our society can't prop them up anymore.

You are enough, just as you are.

groxx ,
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@Impossible_PhD also the robber-barons have finally decided they really don't care because there are very clearly no consequences if they're rich enough, so any restraint has been stabbed and left to die on the roadside

@soller@floss.social avatar soller , to random

New user-agent just dropped

On the left, xterm showing btm output. On the right, webkitgtk3 with google open showing the browser's user-agent, which includes Redox.
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groxx ,
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@soller [captcha intensifies]

@soatok@furry.engineer avatar soatok , to random

God dammit, base-58?

groxx ,
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@soatok is that actually an issue? the decoding step can have variable time because it's not crypto-related. e.g. even if you abort early, you leak nothing about the validity of the key, only that it's unparsable. I don't think anyone's worried about JSON-decoding ActivityPub being non-constant-time, and I think that's a fair comparison?

or did they do something strange, and somehow made it leak key information?

groxx ,
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@soatok yeah I mean I don't see why constant time is a useful quality, aside from convenience (base58 is somewhat annoying in general, agreed). doesn't seem security related to leak parsing-time information.

groxx ,
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@rigrig @soatok yeah, I'm definitely on board with safer by default :) just wondering if there's a specific concern / way to use it in the current application, or if it's just the default "might not be a good idea"

@simontatham@hachyderm.io avatar simontatham , to random
A (badly) hand-drawn picture of an imposing medieval-style castle with battlements and towers, titled "Fortress SSH". Cryptographic terms are written all over the castle. The walls are captioned "STRONG ENCRYPTION"; the central battlements "BULK INTEGRITY PROTECTION"; one of the towers is labelled "POST QUANTUM KEM" and the other "PUBLIC KEY SIGNING". The castle gate is labelled "NON-REPLAYABLE AUTHENTICATION". The entire fortress is supported precariously above a grassy plain by balancing on a single narrow and flimsy-looking pole, labelled "Actually checking the server's host key".
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groxx ,
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@charfish @simontatham I've watched SO MANY people see the "key changed, it is possible someone is doing something nasty!" warning for the first time, pause and say "eh? uh..." and then immediately approve it.

humans are always the weakest link.

@Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar Impossible_PhD , to random

Okay, I'm at the museum today and I want to geek out about one if my very favorite things in the universe: manuscripts from the middle ages.

This is an illuminated Qur'an from the 15-1600s. It's embellished with gold leaf and blue lapis ink.

And most of y'all have NO IDEA how expensive that was.

A spread from a lavishly illuminated Qur'an, appointed with lapis and gold.
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groxx ,
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@Impossible_PhD faith and an incredibly effective wealth and power concentrating machine

@joyousjoyness@mastodon.social avatar joyousjoyness , to random

✨ A Sprinkle of JoyousJoyness ✨

The pitterpats!

Have a JoyousJoyfulJoyness day!

video/mp4

groxx ,
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@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar JessTheUnstill , to random

Hey "seniors":

Ask "stupid questions" where your juniors can see you asking them and getting answers from other people. Don't make juniors feel alone in not knowing something and being the only ones asking for help.

groxx ,
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@JessTheUnstill I'm particularly fond of asking these questions in code reviews.

It reminds them that you don't know stuff, and that they can learn something and teach you.

@cadey@pony.social avatar cadey , to random

If the FSF calls your program malware, is that a sign that you've made it?

groxx ,
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@ozzelot @natanbc @thephd
"We're under attack by botnets and LLMs"
"We're under attack by botnets and LLMs"
"We're under attack by botnets and LLMs"
"We're under attack by botnets and LLMs and CI tests"
"This popular botnet and LLM blocker is malware"
"Donate now!"

Perfect, no notes.

@mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , to random

I stopped using Reddit because the company was feeding my words into a large language model, and I stopped using StackOverflow because the company was feeding my words into a large language model, and I will stop using Discord if the company starts feeding my words into a large language model

https://www.theverge.com/apps/673208/discord-ai-forums-anniversary-gamechat

Another involves LLMs. “There’s an incredible opportunity now with large language models and their ability to summarize conversations,” he says. That could help Discord take a long conversation between multiple people — “what is essentially a really poorly structured shareable object,” he says — and boil it down to “something that could be more shareable and then potentially syndicated to the web.”
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groxx ,
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@mcc they've had "AI summaries" for a year and a half or so

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

spa day

Disassembled Ergodox Infinity keyboard, with the plastic components drying on towels
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groxx ,
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@molly0xfff one day maybe they'll be dishwashable

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

Great piece on BlueSky and enshittification by @pluralistic . “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.”

Read more: https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/bluesky-enshittification

Cory’s piece: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/

groxx ,
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@molly0xfff @pluralistic tbh if they're a POSSE-doer and that's the message... it would probably be good to get a mention of that in that post or any post it links to.

As much as I enjoy Mastodon, it's really not any better with regards to "ability to enshittify and take your profile" because accounts are linked to sites, and portability is cooperative instead of controlled by the account-owner. Any host that disables that cooperation locks you in just as much as twitter/blusky/email/etc.

groxx ,
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@molly0xfff @pluralistic POSSE is an excellent escape from all that and I think it's the only viable answer currently, so I do agree with the posts in general. But it's not presenting that route, probably to the detriment of anyone looking to escape the cycle. It's just saying "never again, try federated systems".

groxx , (edited )
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@molly0xfff @pluralistic ah, yep, I missed clicking through to that link for some reason. Thanks!

I think my point still mostly stands tho. It's at the end, in a very large linked post, well after the main link's text claims Mastodon (activity pub / federation in general) solves the issue... when "the issue" is "account portability that can't be revoked when enshittified" which is like 95% not true. Though it has a decent chance to be true eventually, which puts it way ahead of most options.

groxx ,
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@mkj @molly0xfff personal hosting is a strong candidate for "truly better", yeah. Definitely agreed there.

But I'll point out that neither author hosts their own. Nor are they recommending hosting their own (as part of this post, which is all many not-already-subscribed readers will read. I'm not sure elsewhere).

If the claim is "get free from enshittification, I did", they're not taking or recommending that critical step to actually avoid it. The article just says "use mastodon".

groxx ,
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@mkj @molly0xfff it's less of a "nothing here is correct, shame" and more of a "this is misleading in ways that have soured many on the entire fedi thing". Fedi is great, but it's rarely an easy option to gain any real benefits, and presenting it as one is problematic.

groxx , (edited )
@groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

@molly0xfff @mkj yeah, and I think that's what most should do. Extremely cheap, generally migratable, and about the only enshittification risk is ICANN which is pretty acceptable. POSSE is great. A bit high-skill, but not bad compared to many computer things, and there are a lot of side benefits to that knowledge.

It is a shame POSSE social networking isn't a thing yet. Outside very small niches anyway.

vkc , to random

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    groxx ,
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    @vkc the loss of Pidgin as a common denominator really screwed up usability

    @thephd@pony.social avatar thephd , to random

    I used a modded Foobar2000 for so long that being forced to use the base one on MacOS has taught me how fucking garbage it is.

    I am so sick of OSS software, lmao.

    groxx ,
    @groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thephd this has generally been my take on foobar - I have no idea why people like it so much. It's like VLC's media library UX, which I also can't stand - I vastly prefer using a dumb file explorer over that style.

    Is it the mods? I haven't explored that at all. Maybe I should.

    @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aeva , to random

    petition to rename "width" to "widgth" for monospace consistency with "height" and "length"

    groxx ,
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    @aeva can we also change to "heigth" for consistency?

    @thephd@pony.social avatar thephd , to random

    Using my git tool and realizing that they don't normalize the filenames in filepaths so after moving to MacOS with my git commits, everything that has an accent in it now claims it's a completely different file despite these files being committed literally YEARS ago 😭💀

    A screenshot of the Fork Git GUI showing that every file with accent characters is shown as "new", despite a copy of that file already being stored in Git.
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    groxx ,
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    @thephd file systems doing normalization always ends well. we knew this from case-insensitive-ASCII days and yet...

    @thephd@pony.social avatar thephd , to random

    so like. IS there a way on a typical Linux distrubution to just... download software from the internet and run it?

    Does it have to be a shell script? Is that the only way to do it? This kind of sucks.

    groxx ,
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    @thephd to cover the basics just in case: .deb files are generally just double-click-to-install. All the images/container/etc stuff is much harder and more finicky to use 95% of the time, ye olde standards generally work just fine.

    @thephd@pony.social avatar thephd , to random

    Well, after wasting a bunch of time trying every combination of login names imaginable with the password I know works I guess it's time to just completely re-do my Mac from the ground up, because Why Not.

    groxx ,
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    @thephd does it not even boot into internet recovery? That's capable of fixing almost everything in my experience, if you haven't tried that specifically.

    If you can't even get into that... yep. Box. It's super annoying that they can't just use a USB drive to bootstrap it.

    @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

    accepted solution: take the day off

    1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION<br>SOLVED<br>Reply posted on&nbsp;12-07-2023 10:00 AM<br>I ran into this yesterday, after a couple hours of trying various things to no avail, I finally took the day off. This morning it works. Traffic is now directed to my latest revision&nbsp;🙂
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    groxx ,
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    @molly0xfff and lo, the problem was assuredly solved forever, and there was much rejoicing

    @nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar nixCraft , to random
    groxx ,
    @groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

    @nixCraft evidently they can't be competitive anywhere except where they can spend billions more than competitors.

    Sounds about right.

    @eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar eniko , to random

    my games are still on sale on itch and steam for the next 3 days. we're struggling to reach the end of kitsune tails development (a mario-like platformer with a very gay story) without running out of money, so any support would be greatly appreciated

    itch.io: https://eniko.itch.io/
    steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15673/Kitsune_Games_Complete_Pack/

    yuzu kitsune tails showing off her normal, little fox, snow fox, and earth forms

    groxx ,
    @groxx@hachyderm.io avatar

    @eniko ko-fi's UI really lives up to their promises

    As advertised, "show more" shows only the word "more"