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• Post #4411214

  Apple has a "What the heck is Mastodon?" guide sitting in the App Store. Servers, the three timelines, alt text, content warnings. They compare it to email. Thousands of independent servers, you pick one, you can talk to everyone on the others, and you can move house later without losing your contacts. I have explained this to people maybe two dozen times and never once that cleanly. I usually lose them around the word "instance", which is a word nobody outside this place h...

• Post #4410834

  Good read on what is coming in PHP 8.6, out November 19. Partial function application is the one I keep rereading. str_replace(' ', '-', ?) gives you a closure with the rest prefilled, and it finally makes the pipe operator from 8.5 pleasant to use. Plus a Duration class, a built-in clamp, and session cookies defaulting to httponly and SameSite Lax, which should have been the default a decade ago. I did not pick this language 19 years ago. It picked me somehow. First thing that...

• Post #4410448

  @switch_plan@mastodon.social Nothing really worked on my side. Somehow it came back at eight in the morning, the day after I opened the ticket with OVH support. They got the VM running again, but it came back in the same broken state and would not have survived a reboot. And that is what I saw, once SSH was back and I could read /proc/1 from a normal shell. Everything sort of works, and sort of does not. So the right thing was to sort it out before the next reboot hung again. Blacklisting qx...

• Post #4396115

  It's so hard when you have depression and a migraine with a severe prodrome and anhedonia at the same time. There was one day when I didn't think about death, but it seems that was a very short episode. Before that, I found out that the insurance company won't pay my family if I decide to end my life, because they won't let me get life insurance due to my diagnoses already being in the database, and they specifically account for cases like this. So I won't be able to pu...

• Post #4326343

  Drew the whole OSI stack because I got tired of googling which layer TLS sits on. Many years in. Still counting on my fingers. In practice I touch three of them. Physical, when someone unplugged the thing. Network, when it is DNS. Application, when it is also DNS. Presentation I had to look up. Twice. The first result was a mnemonic about pizza so I closed the tab out of spite. Layer 5 is in there too. Doing something. Allegedly. #OSIModel #Networking #DevOps #SysAdmin #ItsAlwaysDNS #Blog #...

• Post #4262053

  On paper, I have everything a person is supposed to want. A family I love. Work I am good at. A home in a safe country. And most mornings the colors are still off. Recurrent depression does not care about inventory. Seven years of treatment. Therapy, pharmaceutical support in most of its forms. Some things helped for a while. Nothing has held yet. The first line of my bio was never a joke. Some days it is background noise. Some days it is the loudest thing in the room. There is no lesson he...

• Post #4262052

  Confession, in exactly the amount of detail this deserves. I over-explain. Every time. Ask me one small question and I hand you the full technical appendix, the edge cases, and a brief history of why. Then the guilt shows up, so I go find the person again to apologize for over-explaining. A good apology needs specifics, so I list exactly which parts were too much. In order. With examples. Which is, itself, an over-explanation. About the over-explanation. There is no exit node in this loop....

• Post #4262051

  Learned something uncomfortable about Xanax recently. I always knew the clinical word for it. I never felt it as true until now. It is a depressant. What it does is not lift anything. It turns the volume down. The noise, the dread, the constant monitoring of every room I am in, all of it quieter. I am also on antidepressants, at the same time. Two signals pushing in opposite directions. One trying to turn the volume up, the other turning it down. And where anhedonia has already zeroed a chann...

• Post #4206346

  Found a site today: https://reasonstostay.org Sitting with it, trying to find something to hold onto. Not sure yet how many reasons I'll find. But I'm looking. #Depression #Anhedonia #MentalHealth

• Post #4206336

  Found a site today: reasonstostay.org Sitting with it, trying to find something to hold onto. Not sure yet how many reasons I'll find. But I'm looking. #Depression #Anhedonia #MentalHealth

• Post #4173533

  It has been a while since I wrote a proper long guide about something I actually love doing. In September 2025 I wrote up how to run Mastodon on Kubernetes. That blog is gone, the guide survives only in the Web Archive. A text about backups that exists as somebody else's copy. At least it stayed on topic. So I rewrote all of it against Mastodon 4.6. The part I got wrong the first time was the most important one: Postgres as a Deployment with a PVC next to it. Kubernetes sends SIGTERM, Pos...

• Post #4173509

  It has been a while since I wrote a proper long guide about something I actually love doing. In September 2025 I wrote up how to run Mastodon on Kubernetes. That blog is gone, the guide survives only in the Web Archive. A text about backups that exists as somebody else's copy. At least it stayed on topic. So I rewrote all of it against Mastodon 4.6. The part I got wrong the first time was the most important one: Postgres as a Deployment with a PVC next to it. Kubernetes sends SIGTERM, Pos...

• Post #3970114

  After more than a year on the waitlist, my Thundermail Early Bird invite finally landed. I subscribed without a second of hesitation and grabbed dol@tb.pro and dima@tb.pro before anyone else could. Do I need them? Absolutely not. I already run my own three-letter domain, I am on Proton Visionary, Apple One Premier, and a dozen mailboxes I barely open. But this was never about need. I want @thunderbird@mastodon.online to make it. I want at least one piece of email infrastructure left standing t...

• Post #3969731

  RE: https://mementomori.social/@rolle/116945906065103592 That “hit by a train” part is painfully accurate. I’ve been feeling exactly like that since 6 AM today. What a coincidence that this post showed up right now. Hope you recover soon - rebound migraines after a half marathon sound brutal.

• Post #3912434

  Open sourcing the codebase does not make X part of the fediverse. Worth saying plainly. Fediverse is about the protocol, not the license (obviously). ActivityPub lets my server and yours talk to each other. A public GitHub repo does not, X stays exactly as centralized and walled off as before, just with visible source. Lie or not, I honestly do not know yet. What I know is a promise is not a mechanism. No timeline, no reproducible build process, no way today to check that the binary in product...

• Post #3794020

  Another day of complete emptiness, loneliness surrounded by loved ones, having everything I once dreamed of - yet none of it brings any joy, doesn't evoke even a single emotion. I can't imagine what could possibly bring me joy right now. #Depression #Anhedonia #MentalHealth #Health #Blog #Thoughts

• Post #3793936

  I saw a video online where someone was asking random people on the street: “What would you choose? A million dollars right now - but you don't get to see tomorrow? Or no money at all, just another day tomorrow?” The point was to show how much people value their own life - that even one more day is worth more than a million dollars. Right now, I honestly don’t understand them. #Depression #MentalHealth #Health #Thoughts #Blog

• Post #3755795

  Woke up to a list of duties and no strength to feel anything about them. The body keeps going. It cleans, it carries, it answers questions. A shell that still holds its shape and does what it is supposed to do. No strength even to fake a smile in the moments where a smile would be the kindest thing to offer. This is what anhedonia actually is. Not sadness. Absence. There was one more paragraph here. Probably the best prose I have written in months, courtesy of the thoughts that are not lookin...

• Post #3741460

  Sometimes newer is not better. At least not for the things that matter to you. I benchmarked two OVH VPS in the same Zurich location. My current 2025 model with a 500 Mbit network against the newer 2027 model with 1 Gbit. Same AMD EPYC Genoa cores, same provider, nearly identical sysbench CPU scores. Then the surprises started. The older box pushes 6,612 MiB/s in memory tests, the newer one 932 MiB/s. That is 7x. Random 4K reads: 1.32 million IOPS against 832k. And the old model is even about...

• Post #3718118

  Small win in the new role. Two weeks in, and I got official permission to use @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net as my work browser :vivaldi_red: Edge stays the company standard, this is a personal exception, and I am perfectly fine with that. For now. The formal route existed: a software approval request, a ticket, the whole bureaucratic chain. What actually settled it was a short live demo at our Friday Jour Fixe for the head of IT, a man who has spent decades keeping infrastructure stable and...

• Post #3717058

  My first Outline contribution shipped yesterday in v1.9.0: CloudFront support for signed attachment URLs (PR #12656). I wrote it months ago to solve my own problem, the PR got merged, and then life happened and I stopped checking. Yesterday I opened the release notes and there it was, my handle under "New Contributors". Small patch. Still counts. That's kind of the whole point of open source. https://github.com/outline/outline/releases/tag/v1.9.0 #OpenSource #Outline #AWS #Clou...

• Post #3579210

  One of the more disorienting parts of living with both recurrent depression and migraine: you don't always know which one is starting. With migraine, at least the pain shows up - prodrome, then the hit, predictable as weather. With depression, it doesn't have to. Instead there's anhedonia, nothing landing anymore, and thoughts that aren't looking out for me. That's the actual difference. One hurts and ends. The other doesn't need to hurt to be dangerous. That’s where I...

• Post #3531317

  Not long ago, I left a role I had every reason to think would be a dream fit. On the way out, I got an unexpectedly kind gesture (pictured). I'm taking the high road, so no story-time about the job - just what I'm keeping from it: - What burnout actually is, not the buzzword version. - What autistic burnout actually does - not "tired", but losing skills you've had for years. - How loud unmanaged micromanagement gets, until it's the only voice left in your head. - That...

• Post #3112236

  The funny thing is, I had this exact idea in my head for years - but never saw it brought to life. Until I found this 6-year-old video by Browser Ballett. They flip the script perfectly - straight people getting the exact same invasive, disgusting treatment that queer folks face every single day. It's brilliant, sharp, and painfully accurate. If you're LGBTQ+: you are not broken. You are not a phase. You are not the problem. The people who can't handle love and authent...

• Post #3112235

  Just arrived today and I'm genuinely amazed! 🔥 My Vivaldi cap and full sticker pack finally showed up. The quality is excellent, the logo looks sharp as hell, and the stickers are just pure joy. Now I’m fully prepared for the inevitable questions at work: "What’s that logo?" “Where can I get this?” “Is this browser actually good?” Yes, it's good. Yes, you should try it. And yes - I already have all the answers ready 😄 If you're tired of being the pr...

• Post #3112234

  I stood in front of this little machine and was completely mesmerized. Apple Macintosh Classic II (1991) - the very last black-and-white compact Macintosh Apple ever made. 9-inch monochrome screen, 16 MHz 68030 processor, perfect all-in-one design. Even after 35 years it still looks incredibly clean, elegant and timeless. Sometimes the old machines have a "soul" that modern computers just can't replicate anymore. Or it's just me getting old now 🥲 #Macinto...

• Post #3112233

  My little son turned 4 recently! We threw him a fun birthday party, but let's be honest - the real star of the day was our dachshund who showed up looking absolutely fabulous in this unicorn party hat 🐾 She rocked it like a pro and stole the show from everyone. Best birthday crew ever! ❤️ #Dachshund #Dogs #Birthday #Blog #Fediverse #Photography #Photo

• Post #3112232

  Gave my son his first serious gift a few days ago. A @protonprivacy "Born Private" activation code. While most people are creating Gmail accounts for their newborns, I decided to start him off with actual privacy from day one. A bit dramatic? Maybe. But in 15–20 years when he asks "Dad, why doesn’t my email spy on me?" — I'll just smile and say "You’re welcome". Sometimes the best gifts are the ones they’ll only appreciate much l...

• Post #3112231

  Plex just announced they're raising the price of Lifetime Plex Pass to $750 starting June 1st. Until then you can still grab it for $250 (or smth like that, varies by region). I bought mine last year for $149 on Black Friday and I'm sitting here feeling pretty smug about it. I don't even use Plex that often, but damn - timing is everything. A lot of people on Reddit are happy they got it for $70–80 back in the day. Now the question is: is $250 still worth it before t...

• Post #3112230

  Met Spock recently at the museum 🖖
 Meanwhile, I'm quietly spreading the @Vivaldi gospel wearing their merch. Logical combination, right? #StarTrek #Spock #Vivaldi #VivaldiBrowser #LiveLongAndProsper #Museum #Photo #Selfie