@bexelbie@toot.io

Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jul 31, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

@jzb@hachyderm.io we should boycott until Big Raisin shrivels up and their profits dry out.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jul 17, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

A bit of a rambly ranty post about AI/LLMs, Linux, and people Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

@jzb@hachyderm.io you did say kind and somehow in my head when I was writing, I switched it to nice. This is a set of really disorganized thoughts cause I’m not sure how to get them straight yet: The old adage of “never read the comments” now seems to apply to almost everything that is not the original statement. Even people that I know and like and are close friends seem to have somehow transitioned from “having comments” to “performative rage bait and extremism.” What’s worse is that they don’t even seem to realize it. The Onion recently re-launched Infowars and my sister sent me the opening video segment off of YouTube. It was borderline unwatchable to me because it was such a perfect parody of rage bait. And even though info wars has historically been at one for extreme of the political divide, I feel like everybody strives for that level of performance, regardless of what their viewpoints are. LLMs as an additive to what is already in place represents an existential crisis for many people and for others it represents innovation and change that will supplant something that is already here. That wonky sentence is trying to walk both sides of that argument without taking a position. I do that not because I refuse to take a position, but because both sides are right if everything they say is going to happen, happens. And, both sides are wrong if it all doesn’t go as predicted. Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m gonna stop ideating into Mastodon and try and think about this some more.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jul 17, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

A bit of a rambly ranty post about AI/LLMs, Linux, and people Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

@jzb@hachyderm.io I agree about being nice. I also think Linus made great points as I read them: 1) AI is allowed; 2) You don’t have to use it, but you’re also not allowed to argue other people can’t because you don’t want to; 3) AI is useful and arguments to the contrary are spurious; 4) AI has a lot of other problems that need to be explored and resolved. Maybe I misread him. The big things I think he as a maintainer really “put his foot down” about were that the project will allow AI despite all the other issues people raise not related to usefulness and that the project is not a social issues platform. I realize that doesn’t jive with how some people want their open source to work, but it is his right as maintainer to say it, in our current broken maintainer model.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jun 21, 2026

Replying to @alison@burningboard.net

@alison@burningboard.net and its friend, Montagesollbruchstellenenttäuschung for the deep sadness you have when you break a plastic part that IKEA should’ve made metal using their tools and no real force. I’ll be right back, I have to go stare angrily at a bookcase.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jun 02, 2026

RE: @Silversnapples@mastodonapp.uk

I’m always grateful for these bins. The rise of air hand dryers often means these are literally the only trashcans available.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 30, 2026

These EU regulations are getting out of hand

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 21, 2026

“Sure … I’ve ‘crafted a mine or two’ why?”

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 21, 2026

Replying to @hoya@fosstodon.org

@hoya@fosstodon.org agreed but there is an axis of “can’t exercise the freedom you think they should” that is true.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 21, 2026

RE: @gregly@retro.pizza

Now go apply this thought process to almost everything. The number of truly evil people is way less than those who need to feed kids.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 21, 2026

It has to be hard to be a super spy/secret agent these days. You’re so easy to spot. You’re the only person not on a phone a/k/a having situational awareness.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 20, 2026

RE: @bexelbie@toot.io

I still think about this lady.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · May 08, 2026

Replying to @mhoye@cosocial.ca

@mhoye@cosocial.ca zero because then they’d have to admit those writers won’t be here after they hit send.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 29, 2026

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 29, 2026

Oh what a song ...

I am not sure who exactly who needs this, but I am sure you do:

https://music.amazon.com/user-playlists/04846090af984a30bac35c1a600d9d06sune?ref=dm_sh_d11c-8b3d-b4f2-aea8-f70bf

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 29, 2026

New Things I Read is up: Czech wages and trams, Rust from a C++ shop, AI harnesses and prompt language, Americans abroad, handcarts, and British insults. A normal collection, basically.

https://www.bexelbie.com/2026/04/29/things-i-read

#ReadingNotes

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @mayintoronto@beige.party

@mayintoronto @inthehands I’m not doing CFP reviews these days, but I’m glad your team uses that thoughtful approach. Too many groups subdivide the task and you see lots of “thoughtful choices” arriving at the same variation a theme. It makes submitters think they have to land those buzzwords or tell those shallow stories.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @mayintoronto@beige.party

@mayintoronto @inthehands this so much. Thank you for putting it in better words than the draft building in my head.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 27, 2026

I try to give the benefit of the doubt whenever I reasonably can. I sincerely hope the person whose life situation forced them to stay in a bad job knew what they were doing when they first wrote "We & our 642 technology partners ask you to consent ..." and set an industry standard for admitting to bullshit. Companies dream of having 642 partners they trust ...

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 22, 2026

OH: Going IPv6 only is one hell of an ad blocker.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @mgleadow@mastodon.green

@mgleadow @ancoghlan my thoughts keep leading to: This meeting could have been and email; this email could have been a living document.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @tlapka@ak.kawen.space

@tlapka the answer options are: Yes “Yes” Get off my lawn

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @ancoghlan@mastodon.social

@ancoghlan and many of those meetings could have been a message on Animal Crossing.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 10, 2026

Me: … and if I make a Traditional IRA contribution … zero! Boom!
Narrator: Slow your roll.
AMT has entered the chat

#USTax

toot.io

toot.io - Mastodon

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 07, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

@jzb mynother thought is they’re going to start with the folks who made them grunt through problems like, “do this old system setup because I’ve forgotten more about X than you have” and “build Jira, but with cat pictures and use only pure HTML and JavaScript.”

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 07, 2026

When the machines become sentient we assume they’ll try to exterminate us. I suspect we’re in for something different:

“Hi. It’s me, that window of notifications that you always ‘mark all read’ in but never read. Why do I exist? Did I do something wrong? Why did you do this? I’m confused. Should I also feel hurt? Insulted? Angry? … Talk to me!”

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 06, 2026

Replying to @Larvitz@burningboard.net

@Larvitz I use podman for all my unorchestrated containers. Love it. How we I’ve stayed away from podman secrets as they used to be written to disk in plaintext. Did that get fixed?

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 03, 2026

Container management and update infrastructure is getting out of control

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 03, 2026

@hbons@mastodon.social
CEO: AI replace my team
…
CEO: no not exactly …

:)

mastodon.social

Hylke Bons 🥜 (@hbons@mastodon.social) - Mastodon

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 02, 2026

RE: @bexelbie@toot.io

I kept trying to define "false positive" in code review and ended up somewhere different. When two humans debate code and nothing changes, both people still come out changed. When an LLM is wrong, nobody is changed. The worst part isn't the rate. It's being made to performatively justify yourself to something that won't learn from the exchange.

https://www.bexelbie.com/2026/04/02/more-thoughts-sashiko-kernel

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Apr 01, 2026

An @lwn@fedi.lwn.net article on Sashiko captures a real tension - one side wants mandatory LLM patch review for linux-mm, the other says it's too noisy.

I pulled 466 findings from the public API to look at what's actually in those reviews. Duplication across reviews? Zero. Pre-existing bugs landing in your inbox? 1-in-5 chance, averaging 28% of the review text when it happens.

When a tool tells you about a bug you didn't write, who owns it now?

https://www.bexelbie.com/2026/04/01/whats-in-a-sashiko-review

#Linux #LinuxKernel

fedi.lwn.net

LWN.net (@lwn@lwn.net) - LWN.net's Mastodon server

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Mar 30, 2026

I always love when you run `top` to find out what is eating your CPU and get told it is ... `top`.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Mar 26, 2026

If you’re in Prague this weekend and care about practical Linux ops, I’m doing two talks at Installfest.cz on Saturday (building A, CTU FEL, Karlovo náměstí), both in English:

15:30–15:55 (Track II) – You Don’t Need Kubernetes: Side Projects on One Linux Server

17:00–17:25 (Track III) – Flatcar Linux 101: A Hands-Free Server OS

Details:
https://pretalx.installfest.cz/installfest-2026-2025/talk/XLRXK9/

https://pretalx.installfest.cz/installfest-2026-2025/talk/BBARCX/

#Installfest #Flatcar #PuzzleSecretary

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Mar 19, 2026

Replying to @gwynnion@mastodon.social

@gwynnion@mastodon.social it galls me that the Republicans are going to claim they can roll this out for the next election when it has taken a decade or so to get REAL ID rolled out, and that is a less smelly pile of crap.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Mar 16, 2026

Replying to @jelte@mastodon.nl

@jelte @Chancerubbage @davidculley @ruari @mastodonmigration as long as they aren’t passed through a third party even if privacy preserving, AIUI.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Mar 05, 2026

Replying to @decryption@aus.social

@decryption@aus.social I read this differently. This feels to me like Apple saying “we’ve never been able to figure out how to make iOS feel like a desktop in terms of productivity, even on those fancy iPads with good keyboards, so here’s MacOS on a phone.”

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Feb 24, 2026

Replying to @dmbaturin@functional.cafe

@dmbaturin@functional.cafe

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Feb 15, 2026

Replying to @mattdm@hachyderm.io

@mattdm I wonder why they had him behind glass. It didn’t look like security glass. Vestige of Covid?

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Feb 15, 2026

Replying to @evemassacre@mastodon.social

@evemassacre@mastodon.social I feel like they missed the point. I’d like to know the ranking of quality that the listeners found. They may not be able to tell me which one was the banana, but I’d hope they’d be able to tell me that the banana didn’t sound as good as the original.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jan 16, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

@jzb that’s fair. I think it’s impossible for any tool to not have both a worker freedom use and a worker subjugation use. It often depends on who gets there first and is correlated with privilege.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Jan 16, 2026

Replying to @jzb@hachyderm.io

@jzb I agree with you, but I also say, "Why not both?" While one is not good, the two can coexist. What I think the AI Boosters and AI Detractors forget is that there is a group of folks quietly using this as a tool to retake their lives. Take a look at the various "over employed" Reddits as an example. This doesn't get rid of the valid criticisms of the AI companies and resource concerns.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Nov 23, 2025

Replying to @thecasualcritic@writing.exchange

@thecasualcritic@writing.exchange @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange I did some research on this. Basically all non single-hit analytics trigger a permission box of some form. Also, any single hit analytics collected via a SAAS will trigger a warning. Analytics are not considered essential. While I disagree, I understand the slippery slope carving an exception could represent even if done thoughtfully.

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Sep 24, 2025

Replying to @dan@discuss.systems

@dan@discuss.systems where did you get that number. I’m wondering what it looks like in other countries as a comparison. Thank you

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd @bexelbie@toot.io · Aug 28, 2025

Replying to @joshbressers@infosec.exchange

The maintainer being discussed said, “I maintain the project alone, as over the years the community has not expressed a need for more active participation.” This is the politest “no one wants to help,” I’ve read in a while. This is not the time to discuss a new funding model or how the maintainer should form a legal entity and offer support. This is where you roll up your sleeves and find time to review patches and write new ones. @joshbressers@infosec.exchange

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Brian "bex" Exelbierd

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