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• Post #4203979

  This is an extremely well written essay, and I endorse its position. Strongly. If all you ever do in life is "the easiest way to get by," are you really, truly, *living*? Or are you just existing? https://po-ru.com/2026/07/28/you-dont-just-have-to-give-in

• Post #4178729

  The guy behind me at a red light today thought it was hilarious to creep up inches behind me on my motorcycle and lay into his horn EXACTLY as I began cracking the throttle, as the guy ahead of me started moving. He thought it was so funny, he crept up and did it again at the next light. He seemed less amused about being stuck behind me, turned 180 degrees in the saddle to stare at him like an owl with an iridium visor, while two blocks of traffic zoomed by on the right. Don't be that g...

• Post #3969131

  God I hate Bluetooth consumer shit. My kid connected to my Anker Soundcore Motion Boom Plus "boom box" at some point in the last couple of days without my knowledge... so the next time I turned it on, not only did the ongoing (important) call she was on suddenly route her (private) audio to the stupid jam box, **I** was utterly unable to use it myself until I could get hold of her and get her to forget the connection entirely. There is absolutely no provision for even a basic PIN to...

• Post #3903739

  I don't know why I'm noticing this more lately, but all the memes about "white man energy" confidence/perceived-importance really are on point. I keep finding myself in situations where women are in charge, I really could not *possibly* be authoritative, and yet--without me saying a word, and despite nobody present knowing who I am--my mere white, male, and grey-bearded presence pulls focus from the women it should rightfully be on. Pay more attention to women, y'all. Pl...

• Post #3661501

  Twinless is a 2025 movie in which a man who lost his twin brother in a car accident learns how to live without him. You will notice I did not say that's what this movie is "about" because, well... it isn't. What this movie is actually about is fascinatingly broken people, and it is one of the most intricately layered, thoughtfully constructed mindfucks I've ever watched. HIGHLY recommended. This is now one of my all time favorite movies. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3132...

• Post #3548723

  Somebody please ELI5 to me why Ubuntu's systemd refuses to boot a system if ANY network interface is not currently connected to a network, with an UNLIMITED timeout. It's not (just) that I still have to remember to systemctl mask systemd-networkd-online-wait. I want to know what the hell was this idea about in the FIRST place--and why, after *years* of this idiocy, is it still in place? Who wanted this? And why? What "problem" was it meant to solve? Who wants their system to...

• Post #3539191

  Ohmygod. THE CHAIR KNOWS.

• Post #3538527

  Public Service Announcement: If you have a machine that keeps losing trust relationship with Active Directory, *especially* at the frequency of about once every one to three days: hit an elevated CMD prompt on the affected system (after restoring its trust relationship by leaving and rejoining the domain), then try w32tm /resync. If it tells you "no available time data", that machine can't get NTP from the domain. Ping the AD, go to the DC it resolves to, try w32tm /resync THERE...

• Post #3472223

  I cannot believe it is the year of our noodly lord two thousand and twenty-six and yet I STILL have to do shit like: * run Notepad as Administrator * open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\HOSTS * tell fucking Notepad to show me all files * add an entry for the AD domain that points directly to the LOCAL DC only * save ... just to keep a member server from constantly trying to jump across VPN links every time it needs an AD token. WHY the hell does AD not already prioritize subnet-local DCs?!

• Post #3151820

  Look, I don't like vibe coding any more than anybody else does. But lay off of Tridgell if you're not willing to step up and do a better job yourself. Rsync is OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. Tridge doesn't need to "quit" if you don't like the job he's doing with it: anyone who thinks they're able to do better ALREADY has the opportunity to do so. Tridge--and, SIGH his slop coding assistant--are doing a job none of US would. So either like it, leave it, or step the hell...

• Post #2849967

  Fuck systemd. Seriously. FUCK THAT SHIT. I am so goddamn tired of it getting its nasty, poorly-coded, bug-ridden fingers into EVERYTHING like some kind of goddamn Microsoft library would. I can't use the shutdown command anymore, because systemd says "but you have a terminal open! In your own UID! that you're issuing the shutdown command from!" and prevents it from happening. So I have to instead systemctl reboot -f. And the -f is REQUIRED because see above, re my own TTY. I...

• Post #2574785

  A new #OpenZFS article of mine is up at Klara! Ever fretted about how to get the most out of your database's storage performance? Here's a nice chewy read to get you on track: https://klarasystems.com/articles/tuning-openzfs-for-production-databases/

• Post #2235073

  HMMMMM

• Post #2231494

  People in the "Home Server Setups" group on Facebook are sharing their vibe coding "success" stories. This guy knows nothing about Linux, so he had Gemini whip up a "universal admin interface." I haven't seen the code behind that ncurses-based UI, nor do I want to. The menu option names and the knowledge of how that thing was created are horrifying enough.

• Post #2155388

  In related news, Microsoft is offering thousands of its most senior employees an early buyout plan to get them off the payroll. ... only a few months after announcing to everyone how their new focus is QA and making sure everything works the right way, every time, reliably. I'm sure there won't be any downsides to THAT.

• Post #2035275

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116465689693004632 This is very true. The problem is that the pockets of the assholes pushing AI are a *lot* deeper than the pockets of the IT workers that companies are determinedly attempting to replace with AI. Several years of this shit will do no more than disappoint the oligarchs, but it will *ruin* careers and even lives of millions of workers who can't just wait out a major loss of income "for a few years" while this plays...

• Post #1725145

  I'm not sure why, as a tech obsessed teenager distrustful of authority, it never occurred to me that when AI actually became a thing, it would be an unvarnished tool of oligarchy. But boy howdy. Add that one to the same "Jim's Dumb Teenage Takes" file right next to "all this hacking in Neuromancer is so stupid, just put a password on it and you're golden." 1980s-era William Gibson had a MUCH better handle on how the world works than 1...

• Post #1421892

  RE: https://mastodon.neat.computer/@jonah/116387359884541632 This poll was set to stay open for five days... After which, anyone who voted in it GOT A NOTIFICATION letting us know it closed. In other words, all of us got reminded in five days. Well played, @jonah, well played.

• Post #1186466

  As useful as it might be to distinguish between traditional code and AI by referring to them as "deterministic" and "probabilistic" systems, it's important to remember that "determinism" really just means "we sanded off the inconvenient bits." Don't believe me? Ask Heisenberg. We live in a strictly probabilistic universe. No exceptions.

• Post #1186465

  The world ten years ago: "Automated sentry guns, even in fixed emplacements protecting a weapons-hot DMZ border, are a war crime." The world today: "Our killbot would tell you to come get some, but actually it's rolling right up to your door. So just sit tight for a bit. Or you can run, let it have a bit of a chase. Whichever." https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/ukraines-military-robot-surge-aims-to-offset-drone-risks-to-humans/

• Post #1186464

  This is the link wrapped around a fake Docusign button in a #phish I just received: httpx://longrangehunter.ca/Home/ChangePreference?lang=en&returnUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faisalaluminium.com/assets/eactive What our pet grifter is doing here is using *two* servers and *two* domains, in the hope that you won't notice the proxy going from the original domain to the second. That's because it's a lot easier to replace a reverse proxy than an entire website.

• Post #1186463

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@a2_4am/116403705628313363 If anybody sees this warning in any repository of mine--very much including but NOT limited to Sanoid--please let me know about it immediately and DO NOT INSTALL THAT CODE because something is *desperately* wrong.

• Post #905547

  Much, much, MUCH more of this, please. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/meta-youtube-must-pay-3m-to-woman-who-got-hooked-on-apps-as-a-child/

• Post #746494

  This is the best take on Fermi's Paradox that I've ever seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

• Post #498421

  IYKYK. If you *don't* know... well. Think filesystems. Not ZFS. Not btrfs. And just like that, I bet a whole bunch of you suddenly knew EXACTLY who this was about. Sigh.

• Post #498420

  @datarama do you have a link to the bit where he throws a fit? I've seen the IRC chat log where freya convinced it to say it was a trans lesbian (with essentially no effort required), but I haven't seen Overstreet's reaction to it.

• Post #498417

  Ars Technica has let Benj go after the recent AI kerfuffle. I wish Benj well, but this was the right move. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/editor%E2%80%99s-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations.1511671/post-44278029