@mikebabcock@floss.social

Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Jul 31, 2026

If you work with or as a #sysAdmin this video might hit home a few times.

https://youtu.be/I7IHInNJZvE

#comedy #YouTube

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Jul 19, 2026

I saw #Muse live again on Wednesday night in #Toronto at the RBC stage, yes, outdoors, the cheap seats (no seats) in the grass, during the forest fire smoke. Luckily it rained a bit (despite predictions to the contrary) which knocked down the particulates a lot. I also brought a mask.
They were excellent as always. Fantastic music, great performances live, lots of extra bars added, and such a great light&fire&smoke show (sample below).
#music #concert #livemusic #bands #review

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Jul 14, 2026

Replying to @MuhammadFreeSoftware@fosstodon.org

@MuhammadFreeSoftware@fosstodon.org @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange pretty sure that's a totally different thing but you do you.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Jul 13, 2026

Replying to @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange

@lcamtuf@infosec.exchange I point out periodically that I fully support using deep learning systems to review your writing if you have various skill issues like English as a second language or hating the person you're E-mailing but they happen to be your boss. Just don't use #AI to *compose* the messages please. "Does this sound professional?" is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask an agent.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · May 06, 2026

Replying to @TheConversationUS@newsie.social

@TheConversationUS@newsie.social last I knew these worked in many European countries but were not properly regulated in the USA. Have there been changes?

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @theleftistlawyer@mastodon.social

@theleftistlawyer see also technical advise, medical advise, and relationship advise as a starter ... sigh

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @shoq@mastodon.social

@shoq@mastodon.social this is a pretty gross take actually

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @robotspacer@xoxo.zone

@robotspacer@xoxo.zone very fun game

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @jromanowska@fosstodon.org

@jromanowska@fosstodon.org @benjamingeer@piaille.fr you've literally both just inspired me to try writing my own CSV viewer because I'd never even considered doing it. Thanks.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @michcampbell@fediscience.org

@michcampbell@fediscience.org I only ever do copy and paste into Excel, I never "open with" because I simply don't trust it. On my own devices, it simply isn't installed which saves me many headaches.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @dgar@aus.social

@dgar@aus.social are we only allowing for the maga bible to be in fact Pulp Fiction or the entire collected works of Tarantino?

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @503bartley@pdx.social

@503bartley @avilewis a number of places in Canada require EVSEs to be installed in all new builds. Putting them in older builds is harder. Requiring them in parking lots like handicap parking would be lovely though.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @StaceyCornelius@zeroes.ca

@StaceyCornelius I have photos of Alpacas, found them very relaxing ... scroll my recent media for a link to more.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @bennomatic@appdot.net

@bennomatic can I vote for myself not to be called one if I am or not? Its a gross title. ... imagine Windows progress circle of death ... Oh good. I'm not. Phew.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @theleftistlawyer@mastodon.social

@theleftistlawyer@mastodon.social most importantly, any evil president can have their DOJ prosecute you so that you can't run against them in the future.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @mlncn@social.coop

@mlncn@social.coop I'm just angry at every local government that gives tax breaks to companies that are stealing resources from citizens. If a datacenter actually makes sense in your city and locals approve, then go for it. But don't give them tax breaks and discounts on water and electricity. Charge them double for making you upgrade infrastructure. #rant ... sorry. See also the Business Insider report (which spends way too long on noise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8TDOFqkQA

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @darius@friend.camp

@darius we have vending machines for lottery tickets here in #Ontario, Canada now. Sigh.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @calcifer@masto.hackers.town

@calcifer@masto.hackers.town I'm reminded of people who don't know where their food comes from before it gets to the grocery store.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @avilewis@mstdn.ca

@avilewis strong disagree. Its time for gas to cost twice as much and for people to realize they need to stop buying cars that use it. Purchasing gas is the problem, not the price of it. Average Canadian drives 15,200km/yr = ~1300L of gas at average 8.5L/100km. Saving $0.10/L is not exciting. Saving the whole $1.75/L is. Stop driving gas-only cars. #EV #PHEV #vehicles #cars #driving #electrify

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family

@cassidy its not much, but I've always loved the contributing section on the @darktablefr github page: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable?tab=readme-ov-file#contributing which begins "There are many ways you can contribute to the darktable project..."

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @FlockOfCats@famichiki.jp

@FlockOfCats@famichiki.jp I've had my coolermaster storm keyboard for ages now, both my coworkers use them, I bought my wife one she uses every day as well. Very well built, very responsive, still as good as the day I bought it. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough: removable USB cable.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @sleet01@fosstodon.org

@sleet01 @emilymbender there's no problematic ambiguity, you're just purposely using sophistry to pretend anyone's confused. "Citation please" comes to mind. That is to say, show me at least a survey saying anyone's confused about what a "more powerful" model means. Ask for broad definitions even. I'll admit fault entirely if you find a significant number of people who think "power" has to do with the physics definition given how broadly used the term is for "better" or "more capable."

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 14, 2026

Replying to @emilymbender@dair-community.social

@emilymbender how else would you describe doing better at the tasks they're assigned though? A truck that pulls more weight is more powerful. A gun that does more damage is more powerful. An LLM that does better on tests is also more powerful is it not? I'm not sure I see the nomenclature problem. If you want to be really picky, they also require more power to run.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 13, 2026

I don't know much* about #alpacas (they spit?) but it was a beautiful day out on Saturday and I had made a note in my calendar that there was an "official" Alpaca #Ontario event happening open to the public so I showed up with my camera and looked at cute alpacas.

https://bigntallmike.pixieset.com/alpacaontariospringshow/

*I learned they have fleece. But its technically hair. And it comes in 22 official base colours.

Shot on #Nikon D780, #Sigma 24mm

@photography@fedigroups.social
#photography #farming #animals #cute #DSLR #darktable #noedits

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 13, 2026

Replying to @FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services As much as I feel like some people will appreciate this, I feel like most people who aren't getting their posts seen simply don't appreciate the use of hashtags enough.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 03, 2026

Replying to @AnarchoCatgirlism@cyberpunk.gay

@AnarchoCatgirlism its so bad. There's so many reasons to believe in open source software, and one of them is that it really does improve code quality because you have to not be embarrassed for others to see it.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 03, 2026

Replying to @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt it says bicycles not bicycle signs, so I'd just choose the middle four and be okay with it.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 02, 2026

Replying to @georgetakei@universeodon.com

@georgetakei@universeodon.com to be fair, basic math skills are the billionaire class's nightmare but they've done a great job of lowering education spending too.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Apr 02, 2026

Replying to @AinsleyLowbeer@mastodon.social

@AinsleyLowbeer agreed, although as someone who enjoys following #space news, the price tag on the mission thus far is absolutely insane. "A #NASA inspector general estimate cited by Bloomberg put the total Artemis programme cost at about $93 billion through 2025." By comparison, not supporting or against the company in question, SpaceX has run on an annual #budget of around $10-15 billion. That includes both the things they accidentally blow up and the *hundreds* of launches they do a year.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 30, 2026

Replying to @dansup@mastodon.social

@dansup @pixelfed exciting, but I really want a redesigned 'album' interface because Instagram is not the be all and end all of photo sharing. Great stuff, just not great for sharing multiple photos from events as it stands. #photography #pixelfed

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 30, 2026

Replying to @fdroidorg@floss.social

@fdroidorg@floss.social how about you do some responsible journalism and read the part where Google won't stop you from side-loading whatever you want so long as you jump through a couple hoops to make sure you're not being coerced by a third party? Are you being purposely ignorant or do you have an angle here? Google has *very clearly* stated they won't prevent you from doing these things with a little hand-holding. #technology #sysadmin

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 28, 2026

Replying to @evacide@hachyderm.io

@evacide@hachyderm.io but it also presumes informed decision making. Someone out there brought their phone without realizing the potential consequences and wouldn't have if they'd known. Informing everyone is hard. Therefore some choices weren't fully choices but accidents.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 27, 2026

Replying to @fdroidorg@floss.social

@fdroidorg@floss.social 😂 what hyperbole. First is the falsehood that #Google had ever claimed #Android devices are the "best computing device[s] in the world that [do] everything." Second, the fallacy that this definition would preclude a protected ecosystem like they propose. Apple? Most people prefer the safety it offers them. Side-loading? Valid. Silly argument. The new changes protect *most* users from themselves. Best? Power users aren't being stopped at all. Its an inconvenience at best. #sysadmin

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 27, 2026

Replying to @newtontalk@bitbang.social

@newtontalk@bitbang.social just had to share ... Device comparison photo from 2011.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 27, 2026

Replying to @siracusa@mastodon.social

@siracusa@mastodon.social if you need help mourning, I have at least two working #Newton MessagePads still.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @drscriptt@oldbytes.space

@drscriptt @Retreival9096 @Madagascar_Sky I'd really like a more powerful system-wide cert system (on Linux as well as Windows) with a full ACL rules system. Cert A trusted for websites only. Cert B trusted for applications not running as admin. Cert C trusted for IPSec *and* website authentication. Relatedly, I'm frequently found ranting about why I hate npm, pip, cargo et al. from a verification perspective.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @drscriptt@oldbytes.space

@drscriptt @Retreival9096 @Madagascar_Sky this gets around the Microsoft warnings but not the random AV warnings. I also don't like loading additional certs on client machines when I'm "just a vendor" and not their own IT. Respect and all that. So yes I right-click AV, disable for 10 minutes, load app, re-enable.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @drscriptt@oldbytes.space

@drscriptt I've also run into this, and there are ways around it, but its really annoying. It usually means the software is doing something pretty non-standard and makes you wonder. That said, I'm not going to throw the (much smaller than Oracle) vendor under the bus ... but much smaller.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @Retreival9096@hachyderm.io

@Retreival9096 @drscriptt @Madagascar_Sky I have different feelings about Windows AV than I do about mandatory access controls like SELinux. We ship a small terminal emulator internally to clients. We do not pay the Microsoft tax to have them sign it. As a result, Defender yells at everyone that it might not be safe. Why? Because we didn't pay the tax. Not because its safer to use signed software; it isn't. #rant #antivirus

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @Madagascar_Sky@mastodon.social

@Madagascar_Sky as much as I love some other people's videos (who I untagged because this is barely about his post at this point), I'm thinking a substack/medium post would be too short to cover the details. Relatedly, I'm reminded of when quality of service scripts started popping up to magically configure peoples' routers before fqcodel and cake ... nobody was *learning* how things worked, they were just applying fixes like script kiddies. I want people to understand instead. #technology

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @drscriptt@oldbytes.space

@drscriptt so there I am on the phone with tech support for a database vendor and he explains that licensing isn't working because #SELinux is enabled, so I set it to permissive, log the errors, make an appropriate permissions list, compile and turn it back on. He says "nobody in house has made it work with SELinux on" -- obviously none of them spent 15 minutes learning how to use the tools. Ugh. #rant

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @drscriptt@oldbytes.space

@drscriptt @Madagascar_Sky @geerlingguy see also "just turn off #selinux" on every package.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 24, 2026

Replying to @Madagascar_Sky@mastodon.social

@Madagascar_Sky @geerlingguy among other things, your 'forward' rules used to restrict access to your LAN don't apply directly to local services. Your INPUT rules for local services don't apply to forwarded things. And if you have an allocated fixed IP range from your ISP, you probably want to bridge instead of forwarding your interfaces as well. Should totally document my standard Linux router setup some day.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 24, 2026

Replying to @plexus@toot.cat

@plexus I'm more concerned with the Copyright implications tbh. The energy usage bothers me, but mostly I think there's a good middle ground where we use deep learning autocomplete as autocomplete and not as a way to steal other people's code and pretend we wrote it. #programming #aiagent #deeplearning #coding

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 24, 2026

Replying to @geerlingguy@mastodon.social

@geerlingguy as a guy who's been building his own routers professionally for decades now, this is great advice. Also its really quite easy (and always has been with the right knowledge). Just PLEASE don't run additional software on your routers. Run them on a device *behind* the router. You'll thank me eventually. #firewall #router #sysadmin #networking

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 22, 2026

Replying to @canadianglen@mstdn.ca

@canadianglen it would seem my instance doesn't show @cbcnews which is sad.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 15, 2026

Replying to @Stinson_108@mastodon.social

@Stinson_108@mastodon.social @sarahtaber@mastodon.online if you think giving Russia money is a solution to anything in the world, please rethink your position. #politics #farming

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 09, 2026

Replying to @Strandjunker@mstdn.social

@Strandjunker I presume you mean "the USA is" since an awful lot of us on here aren't from there, but the fact that its so obvious kind of also makes the point about how bad it is.

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 09, 2026

Replying to @luis_in_brief@social.coop

@luis_in_brief just have to let you know, there's been some effort to do that here in #Canada (and also a lack of funding):

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Michael T Babcock @mikebabcock@floss.social · Mar 08, 2026

Replying to @dmacphee__dup_1941@mas.to

@dmacphee CBC in Canada fully supports RSS+atom and I appreciate it. Random fun sample: https://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/debaters.xml

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Michael T Babcock

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