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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
dalias@hachyderm.io ("Cassandrich") wrote:

As an aside and plug for musl, on top of promising never to accept slop code, *every single* security advisory we've ever had has come with a patch that either applies cleanly to every single version the vuln was present in or has instructions on how to backport. It is utterly unacceptable to make security fixes that don't work like this.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Per a conversation with a coworker, it turns out that one of my most unpopular opinions is that if you haven't read at least a large fraction of the code, you should not be adding it as a dep via NPM. Doubly so with transitive dependencies.

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
spacehobo@teh.entar.net ("Space Hobo") wrote:

I actually worked at the same place as Andrew Tridgell, over a quarter-century ago. I got to know a few of the OzLabs folks during their immediate post-IBM years, and always had the highest respect for them in that way where you feel acute impostor syndrome when they're in the room.

Tridge almost walked backwards into implementing the Windows SMB protocol (he was just debugging some funny NetBIOS extensions IIRC). But his paper on the #rsync algorithm was groundbreaking, and actually writing the tool to implement it was brilliant. It's become one of those tools like #curl that just forms one of the major structural supports of the modern Internet. I still remember the day that the SSH transport became the default, and I remember being able to thank him in person when he came to the San Francisco office (although IIRC by that point he'd handed control of rsync over to mbp).

I remember at my next job he came to a summit of folks working on print driver/spooler software. When he pointed out that some problems were effectively a cache-consistency algorithm, we all kind of put our fingers to our temples and said "Oh wow, you're SO right!" He was always insightful and sharp, while being gentle and approachable.

I write in the past tense because I haven't crossed paths with him in two decades, and only know what I see him put out. A friend of mine in Australia noted that he hasn't posted to the Canberra LUG list since 2020, thanking someone for congratulating him on receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia. He's very much alive, but from what little I see I grow concerned for him.

In 2024 he took over maintenance of rsync once more. The 3.3.0 release was the last one from the previous maintainer, and Tridge is currently working on 3.4.x releases.

Well... Tridge and #Claude, it seems: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390

The issue tracker for rsync has recently lit up with regressions, showing features that worked reliably for almost 30 years are suddenly coming crashing down in 3.4.2 and 3.4.3. People are scrambling to find ways to pin rsync to known-good versions. The considerate, incisive mind I briefly knew is letting the stochastic parrots do his work for him, and it just seems so astonishingly *unlike* the person I met back in the day.

I am still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I hope all is well for him, but I will not cast aspersions on his goals or his abilities. No, instead I draw this conclusion:

If TRIDGE of all people can't handle #LLMs without a slopocalypse, no one can.

That means you. That means someone you admire who is intelligent and careful and considerate. Not even someone whose opinions on technology you respect a great deal.

No one.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

it is hard work developing concurrency primitives, so i'm having a cheap lager shandy

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
ayke@blahaj.social ("Maaike 🔜 GPN ☎️ AYKE/2953") wrote:

That sudden strong urge to say "hello" to people when you just switched in, even though they probably didn't notice any difference.

Or maybe it's *because* they wouldn't notice any difference otherwise 🤔

#plurality #PluralGang

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
loriemerson@post.lurk.org ("Lori Emerson") wrote:

"The main question we want to answer: Why does the lead continue to press out, when the eraser is pressed and released? Let's take a closer look." 💚 https://mechanical-pencil.com/products/pencil

cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right") wrote:

TFW you realize you've been feeling pretty good lately, and that starts to worry you because that's not, like, normal, and you start to interrogate it, and realize you've been so busy lately with life related things (some are even scary) that you unintentionally stopped reading the news, and then you're like... 🤔

Boosted by jwz:
jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

RE: https://hails.org/@hailey/116657391001259044

all the criticism has been said, all the takes been had. the only metaphor i have been finding consistently useful for understanding what is happening with people and "AI" is addiction, and specifically gambling addiction.

Boosted by jwz:
stuebinm@pleroma.stuebinm.eu ("terru") wrote:

it’s kinda odd how this AI hype leads to discovering some tools are, in fact, still active projects

like there’s a rare category of software which appear to just be “done”, and you don’t expect anything but a bugfix or two a year in terms of updates. and i appreciate that category immensely

like, in my head rsync lives one or two steps below coreutils in terms of “it’s just a thing that exists”. probably if distributions simply wouldn’t update to new slop versions i would simply not notice for years and years and years. It’s so fixed that one possibly doesn’t even need a non-slop fork to keep things going, except maybe as a place to collect security fixes or such

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
lain@fediffusion.art wrote:

you can now run my very own disk operating system in your browser, and it will even tell you how it works.

https://lambadalambda.github.io/laindos/

code is at https://github.com/lambadalambda/laindos

Boosted by jwz:
chiffchaff@tech.lgbt ("kæt") wrote:

@dasgrueneblatt @janl yeah, rsync is where you go after stuff has gone wrong! It's like working in a foundary finding out your fire extinguisher's made by P T Barnum.

Boosted by jwz:
xssfox@cloudisland.nz ("xssfox (crossy)") wrote:

"NASA is aware of the anomaly that occurred tonight at Launch Complex 36...."

This is the "increased latency in us-east-1" of space

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
laemeur@toobnix.org wrote:

YOU MUST USE AI... (or, y'know, don't).

https://toobnix.org/w/mnVk9bsoxxkBP1uPcxGLfZ

Boosted by jwz:
bonzoesc@m.bonzoesc.net ("lizard appreciator") wrote:

Amazon Basics New Glenn Rocket Booster Usable for Men Women Outdoor Explosion Space Lift Heavy Lift Satellite Multifunction

Boosted by jwz:
hailey@hails.org ("Hailey") wrote:

rsync was basically done until the maintainer discovered vibecoding

Boosted by jwz:
bstacey@icosahedron.website ("Blake C. Stacey") wrote:

If I am correctly reading this bill that the Governor of New York just signed, teenagers can no longer legally edit Wikipedia. Websites are obligated to perform "age assurance", and minors are required to have their account defaults set to forbid other users from viewing or responding to media posted by a minor... which, is, you know, *impossible for an encyclopedia*. See pp. 49 ff of the PDF.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A10008/amendment/original

Boosted by jwz:
mhoye@cosocial.ca wrote:

Just thinking back to all the times I've helped junior colleagues grow into better engineers and leaders by reminding them 60 times a day to not hallucinate.

Boosted by jwz:
nelson@wetdry.world ("Nelson Lopez") wrote:

@benjamineskola "hey convincing-bullshit-a-tron2000, i want you to stop making up bullshit when you answer to me"
"ok"

Boosted by jwz:
nocontexttrek ("Star Trek Minus Context") wrote:

#StarTrek

Boosted by jwz:
joachim@boitam.eu ("Joachim") wrote:

this is how you all fucking sound

by stillvreni : https://bsky.app/profile/vreni.bsky.social/post/3mms5baylac2p

#ai #noAI

jwz wrote:

There are good heists, and then there's this one.

David Rush is accused of: Lying on his background check forms; Time-card fraud; Oh yeah, and also stealing $40M worth of gold bars. Rush, a former senior executive service-level CIA employee in...
https://jwz.org/b/yk74

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
vitaut ("vitaut 🤍❤️🤍 🇺🇦") wrote:

BREAKING: GTA NPCs unionize

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
hollie@social.coop ("Hollie") wrote:

The #crows are still interacting. The day I taught them I had peanuts and was willing to share, was a situation where one of them was collecting sticks off our dead tree for their nest, so it associated me coming out the door with breaking sticks off the tree.

Now, one stands in the tree, faces the house, squawks, and pulls a branch off and then drops it on the ground. I come out, send two peanuts sailing into the driveway with my pitching arm (the driveway is about how long my pitching arm can reach), and then I go back in the house and let them eat.

What surprises me is that they only ask me a couple times a day. If I had a human I could summon for an instant slice of pizza, I’d be pressing that button more than once or twice a day.

#birds #birbs

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

tomatoes are the best pokemon

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

Streaming services successfully recreated cable TV, except now every channel costs $14.99, has its own app, and keeps buffering.

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

You know what? The AI craze of late has so clearly shown that industrial programming where people constantly rewrite huge, convoluted codebases is such a dead-end, that I suddenly actually feel good about working on a small silly grocery categorization tool. It just feels wholesome :-)

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@owa/116650913321197621

Timid enforcement begets timid enforcement, and the best way to build support for regulation isn't to admire its potential, it's to demonstrate positive impact in the lives of users.

The EU needs to get serious and legalise safe, capable iOS browsers:

https://infrequently.org/2026/04/the-web-is-an-antitrust-wedge/

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

The studio release sounds so big, so bombastic, so sonically elaborate that I think had I heard it for the first time this way, I would've connected to it immediately despite the irregular structure. Basically:

Attachments:

• gifv: A GIF of Frank from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when he is watching Mac's stage performance and says "Oh my God. I get it"

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
bvibber@wikis.world ("Brooke Vibber :mediawiki:") wrote:

✊

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

When I first heard it last year, I had a hard time connecting with it at first. It's not a traditional album in the sense of, well, having individual songs that you could play in isolation if so desired. It's like a whole piece, with flowing themes and motifs. It was through repeat listening that I was able to see through it.