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• Post #3976047

  Blog entry: We need something between a traditional home solar installation and plug-in solar. Imagine paying an electrician to install an inverter that connects to your electrical panel. You’d be left with a box on the side of your house, with a connection point for solar power. Then you, the homeowner, can plug a solar panel into that box. Or two or three or fifty solar panels. Permitting sucks, so let's reduce the footprint of what needs a permit. https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2026/07/b...

• Post #3963149

  Too bad DDG and Kagi bangs can only scope down to one site, because I'd love to have one to search cooperative extension services’ websites, the U.S.'s best source of agricultural information. They're a wealth of information about gardening, pest management, food preservation, composting, beekeeping, invasive species, stormwater management, etc., etc. But every state has different publications, and sometimes I have to search a bunch to find what I need.

• Post #3951624

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@rejectedplates/116947353796278954 Guess what?

• Post #3716959

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@rejectedplates/116880585706392118 Somebody with a large donkey just sad and confused to have their license plate proposal rejected

• Post #3716958

  I'm adding more features to my retro-designed blog. Today's addition: the song I'm currently listening to. If you miss the web of the '00s, just go ahead and create it.

• Post #3716957

  @mathowie I'm glad you covered here the question of whether noise-cancelling headphones actually reduce noise hitting your eardrums, for safety's sake. I use my AirPods under my standard over-ear hearing protection when running my table saw etc., and I'm glad to know that's actually helping. https://a.wholelottanothing.org/the-airpods-max-2-are-better-at-noise-cancellation-than-the-previous-version/

• Post #3716956

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@gruber/116891628329675008 Apple's move into advertising cheapens their products, cheapens their brand, and raises entirely sensible questions about their commitment to privacy. There is no chance that the advertising income is enough to justify that trade-off.

• Post #3716955

  I don't know what a Git worktree is and I'm annoyed to have to learn what this new thing is.

• Post #3519835

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@kottke/116846509539740340 My family has been here since 1639 (whatever the hell “my family” means that many generations back) and that is extremely not what makes me American. I’m more American for the immigrants that comprised my family, waves of them with each generation, from Canada, Sweden, Sicily, England, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands.

• Post #2565027

  This is brilliant. In Germany, it's popular to buy €200 solar panel / inverter combos that plug into a nearby power outlet, feeding the power back into the grid, running their power meter backwards. "Installation" just takes a minute. Folks in apartments simply hang them from their balcony “like wet laundry.” Over 500,000 have been sold. With power at €0.25/kWh, the payback time is about 27 months—after that, it's just free electricity. https://www.nytimes.com...

• Post #2565025

  Based on all available evidence, Egypt gave Trump $10 million in cash a few days before his 2017 inauguration (that’s 200 pounds of $100 bills). The FBI and DOJ started investigating this in 2019, but attorney general Bill Barr shut that down. Trump then changed US policy in Egypt’s favor. Note that Sen. Bob Menendez was just convicted of likewise taking bribes from Egypt. This is their MO. https://wapo.st/3SxAkvO

• Post #2461959

  99% of my Snyk notifications are "there's a security problem with a library in the Dockerfile of your software that it allows it to run locally for development purposes; no fix is available.” This information is useless to me.

• Post #2139702

  I'd forgotten how good the "Sneakers" soundtrack is. I don't think I've seen this movie in ~25 years.

• Post #2139701

  @mathowie "So far, the ‘killer app’ aspects of AI is helping me create/iterate/finish things I've wanted for many years, but couldn't find time or energy enough to do completely on my own.” Amen! I've been dragging half-completed ideas or ever-crappier websites for *decades*, in some cases, and I have appreciated the help in getting these over the finish line.

• Post #1678814

  I saw today that the Free Software Foundation issued a statement on something or other, and I must remind everybody that child-rape advocate, sex pest, and creep Richard Stallman remains a member of the FSF board. Until the FSF removes Stallman, the board members who enabled him, and accounts & atones for their decisions, they should be ignored.

• Post #1581052

  The ADSL protocol will get you 3.5 Mbps download over wet string. https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html

• Post #1379661

  I have been frustrated by the lack of protest songs in popular culture. Enter Massive Attack and Tom Waits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-57FrioeuE

• Post #1275322

  Today I finished binging Rachel Maddow's 8-part podcast series, "Ultra," about the insurrectionists who planned to violently overthrow the U.S. government in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They had backing from Nazi Germany, had support from top congressional Republicans, and promoted fascist ideals in support of racist and antisemitic goals. The parallels to our current situation are striking. It's appalling that the whole affair has been forgotten. Recommende...

• Post #1153769

  Blog entry: Independent government cost estimates are essential for custom software projects. https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2026/04/igce/

• Post #1015697

  @20002ist Oh cool so I simply say “/ˈæ.pə.θɛm/" thank you Wiktionary

• Post #1015696

  Blog entry: Delivery deadlines are a mistake. I wrote last week about how it’s a mistake to include detailed deliverables in an Agile software development contract, but let’s throw another mistake on the pile: including a delivery deadline in an Agile contract. Yes, I understand it sounds absurd to say that a service contract shouldn’t have a delivery deadline. But hear me out. https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2026/04/delivery-deadlines/

• Post #1015694

  Boy, this bit does not bode well for the rest of this article. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-identity-adam-back.html

• Post #955445

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@thiseconomy/116332450416895439 My bot's been on a real heater recently. On Monday it was "between a rock AND a hard place?” and last week both "for all debts public AND private?" and "hammer AND sickle”?

• Post #955444

  Blog entry: It's a mistake to include a detailed list of deliverables when procuring custom software. https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2026/04/detailed-deliverables/

• Post #955443

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@botgov/116335780980409736 live.gov and launch.gov

• Post #955442

  RE: https://me.dm/@anildash/116342640913190195 If I lived in the EU, I'd have pivoted my career by now to supporting the creation of publicly owned software and technical infrastructure, to wean the member states off U.S. tech. It's the only sensible thing for them to do.

• Post #851774

  New blog entry: “Capital funding poisons software projects." Color of money shapes a lot of things about government in the U.S., and a big one is how we buy software. When agencies have to treat custom software development (an operational expense) as a capital expense, that has a cascading series of effects that lead to billions in wasted spending annually. If we can shift to opex, such as via an IT investment fund, we'll see better results. https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2026/...

• Post #387333

  I got a sweet deal on a 32-address subnet.

• Post #290219

  Dominion Power claims that Virginians’ power usage keeps climbing, so they need to build new power plants that we’ll all pay for with rate hikes. Forced to release internal records, it turns out that the only increase is coming from building data centers. Why should Virginians subsidize Amazon, whose budget is 7x Virginia’s? https://virginiamercury.com/2024/11/26/under-pressure-from-the-scc-dominion-reveals-the-true-cost-of-data-centers/

• Post #289838

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@thisemailfindsyou/116013092201821299 It me