@rhempel@cosocial.ca

rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Aug 05, 2026

Replying to @gvwilson@mastodon.social

@gvwilson@mastodon.social Done - some of those questions are ... shall we say open to interpretation. This is what I worry about most with AI - developing software is a social activity. Every one of those questions is a great team or water cooler discussion topic. When developers are seen as isolated managers of faceless agents, how are conversations taking place about nuances in software development?

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Aug 04, 2026

Replying to @evdelen@mstdn.ca

@evdelen@mstdn.ca @dyckron@cosocial.ca I wanted to buy tickets to a.movoe online and was asked to pay a 5$ convenience charge. Fuck that. I bought tickets the next time I went by the cinema.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 29, 2026

#embedded #python #golang

I've been using Python as a replacement for shell scripting for embedded development tooling for about a decade, but the dependency hell is starting to get to me.

I use PySerial, JSON, YAML, Matplotlib and a few other libraries regularly.

Are there any good reasons to avoid Golang for this kind of work?

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 29, 2026

@Pepijn@mastodon.online When we moved from Canada to Denmark in 2016, getting off the plane in August was refreshing and exciting. It is generally hot and humid in Ontario in August.

We laughed at the Danes that complained when the temps were approaching 30 once in a while - Danish summer is just a clear blue sky and 25c.

It's the best day of the year :-)

mastodon.online

Pepijn (@Pepijn@mastodon.online) - Mastodon

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 29, 2026

Replying to @_elena@mastodon.social

@_elena@mastodon.social I use LEGO Technic elements to hold electronics, sometimes even printing Technic compatible board holders. Your idea is much prettier :-)

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 27, 2026

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn@mstdn.ca @sundogplanets@mastodon.social Ah, the one beside what was Fromager's music? Say no more. I left in 2016 to work in Denmark, and then returned in 2023 and worked in Florida for a while. Back in OS full time now. I knew some of the city band folks, might have known Peter Montgomery, bass player and bari saxophone?

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 26, 2026

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn@mstdn.ca @sundogplanets@mastodon.social You are in Owen Sound? Me too!

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 24, 2026

Replying to @hootalex@mastodon.social

@hootalex@mastodon.social I love this style!

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 19, 2026

Replying to @acarsdrama@live.acarsdrama.com

@acarsdrama@live.acarsdrama.com Now I am very curious what "it" is ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai @anon_opin@mastodon.social They don't call them baggy shirts and pants for nothing!

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 15, 2026

Replying to @frogglin@theblower.au

@frogglin@theblower.au I don't do any kind of fabric crafts, but I clicked the link and loved the little jokes and truly engaging copy writing on the product page. Well done, and please keep making lovely craft kits!

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 15, 2026

Replying to @stuartl@mastodon.longlandclan.id.au

@stuartl@mastodon.longlandclan.id.au @mgorny@social.treehouse.systems Lua is a great little language but it misses the (previously) robust library ecosystem of Python. I'm not feeling the impact of the Python dependency mess yet. Most of my work is using the standard libraries, with a dash of PySerial and a few others. But I do feel the despair of working on tooling for embedded systems programming with so much quicksand under our feet.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 04, 2026

Replying to @Nonilex@masto.ai

@Nonilex@masto.ai Funny how they picked July 4 to start the funeral week - coincidence? - or just epic trolling.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 04, 2026

Replying to @xinit@mastodon.coffee

@xinit@mastodon.coffee If you are able to swing it, consider buying any of the LEGO Powered Up hubs individually or as part of a set either on Bricklink.com or from a local shop or used. Then put pybricks.com on it to program in Python or upgrade to the block programming mode. There is nothing quite like writing a program and turning on a motor or reacting to a sensor for inspiring some kids to explore their ideas. #pybricks #lego

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jul 02, 2026

Replying to @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems No sense poisoning any potential clients with that information up front.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jun 28, 2026

Replying to @anderseknert@swecyb.com

@anderseknert@swecyb.com The four basic particles that make up the universe: Protons Electrons Neutrons ... Morons

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jun 24, 2026

Replying to @nixCraft@mastodon.social

@nixCraft@mastodon.social I had a Thinkpad 701 with the butterfly keyboard - and I sold it. I would LOVE to get that one back :-)

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jun 03, 2026

Replying to @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

@b0rk@social.jvns.ca I am always happy to read anything that you write - it's done with simple words and includes some notes on why it's relevant for you. The classic Byte Order Fallacy by @robpike@hachyderm.io is something I send to every programmer that doesn't believe me when I gently tell them they are making things more complicated than they need to be. Your work (and Rob's) are what the Internet was supposed to be, so thank you! https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallacy.html?m=1

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Jun 02, 2026

Replying to @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place If you are asking for less you are asking too much ;-)

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 28, 2026

Replying to @jackwellborn@mastodon.social

@jackwellborn@mastodon.social @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social Yeah that's not what some of us call it ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 24, 2026

Replying to @killyourfm@layer8.space

@killyourfm@layer8.space Yeah, Bryce Canyon is an amazing place. We were there on the last weekend before the park closed for the season 20 years ago. Beautiful frost coated the formations and you could watch the low sun track the shadows and melt the frost as it advanced. Absolutely magical.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 14, 2026

Replying to @shadow53@floss.social

@shadow53@floss.social Unfortunately, you are unlikely to convince your manager that using AI for coding is a bad idea - and it's not because your argument is wrong, or that they are too dumb to understand. Your manager is probably also getting pressure from THEIR manager to use more AI to improve ... something. Consider saving yourself some stress and just keep doing your work without AI - it will probably be fine. Also consider putting out feelers for your next job ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 12, 2026

Replying to @EndlessMason@hachyderm.io

@EndlessMason@hachyderm.io @dystroy@mastodon.dystroy.org The first thing to get cut is travel and training ... at least that's what I have observed in over 40 years of employment.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 12, 2026

Replying to @dystroy@mastodon.dystroy.org

@dystroy@mastodon.dystroy.org @EndlessMason@hachyderm.io This is a common problem. Those big companies that use your tools have procurement departments, and they usually have a stupidly complex process to add vendors as consultants. That often means they will contract with large consultancies but not individuals. Most companies won't even set aside 1000 dollars for developers to donate to their most used open source projects. It's free right? But they will make swag for a 5K run ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 11, 2026

Replying to @markarayner@mas.to

@markarayner@mas.to The sarcasm is fairly dripping off the page ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 05, 2026

Replying to @rhempel@cosocial.ca

@mcmartin ... FYI I am in the process of moving off of GitHub to (probably) a self-hosted forgejo instance

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 05, 2026

Replying to @Flowermob@mastodon.social

@Flowermob @gerrymcgovern Im hoping he gets a settlement - he's only asking for 1.5 million so the money is pretty reasonable - the bigger impact is the precedent it sets, so I won't hold my breath for a speedy resolution.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 05, 2026

Replying to @mcmartin@mastodon.gamedev.place

@mcmartin As much as I have fond memories of bare metal programming on 68xx, 6502, and other 8 bitters, there's nothing special about them that you can't also learn on a very inexpensive ARm Cortex-M class development board. They often come with a debug interface already built in, and cost anywhere from 10 to 30 bucks and the tool chain is free. I have a project called Adaptabuild that I need to dust off - it's a containerised build/debug environment. https://github.com/rhempel/adaptabuild

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 05, 2026

Replying to @Pepijn@mastodon.online

@Pepijn Unfortunately we are at a point where more people would go out of their way and line up to see the interior of the bookshop in Porto that appeared in a Harry Potter film than would visit a parliament building.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 04, 2026

Replying to @CiaraNi@mastodon.green

@CiaraNi I always loved walking home from the bus station on May 4th, wondering why so many windows had candles in them and then remembering. It's a powerful Danish tradition and I still miss it.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · May 01, 2026

Replying to @SeanCasten@mastodon.social

@SeanCasten This might explain why politics has a cycle that lasts 3-4 generations. Young politicians end up fighting the battles that their grandparents and great-grandparents won when they were young.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @Unixbigot@aus.social

@Unixbigot @jacqueline @wezm This is absolute gold - I use PodMan instead of Docker, but the utility of containers is the same. They make it relatively easy for the developers I work with to use the SAME tooling as the CI/CD pipeline. I would also argue that anyone that can spin up a container reliably is actually a couple of steps ahead of the skills game than someone who needs screen by screen hand holding and instructions for their exact variant of OS to install a package.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird Growing your own food is ineffecient as hell but it is good for the soul :-) I've got plans for a couple of espalier fruit trees on the south side of my garage ( in Ontario ) so I will join you in the mutual admiration society real soon now.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 22, 2026

Replying to @jasongorman@mastodon.cloud

@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud Hexagons are the bestagons https://youtu.be/thOifuHs6eY

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @vantiss@social.treehouse.systems

@vantiss This is what I get for doing this at 3 in the morning ... sorry for the noise. Now I need to think about ways to more easily recognize quote posts.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @vantiss@social.treehouse.systems

@vantiss I don't sign my commits either ...

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @vantiss@social.treehouse.systems

@vantiss Hey this is really cool ! I guess the doink script could just as easily be implemented in a Python script - the bash script spawns perl and sed anyways. I like how you are honest about the reality of signed commits. I wish I was a better person too. :-)

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @walshman23@mastodon.social

@walshman23 @MarkHoltom Engineer here - we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @kdenlive@floss.social

@kdenlive Congratulations - I used Kdenlive for the first time this week to make a video of a talk with one track of audio/video of me talking, and another video track of me stepping through the slides. I used scissors to cut out the audio mistakes, and then the alpha mask and transform to move my talking head into a corner. It "just worked" - and it has inspired me to keep going with this kjnd of content.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @anae@mstdn.mx

@anae If Jack Nicholson was a dog and starred in The Shining - this would be the best poster ever!

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 15, 2026

#embedded #electronics #programming

Well, I've submitted the video for my talk at the Embedded Online Conference this year in May.

It asks - Why Are We Struggling In The Golden Age of Embedded Systems Programming.

I'll describe some of the things my team did to enable really low friction cross functional teamwork in a high pressure situation.

Looking forward to seeing some really great speakers - and I can do it from the comfort of my desk ...

https://embeddedonlineconference.com/session/Why_Are_We_Still_Struggling_in_the_Golden_Age_of_Embedded_Systems_Development

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @stephaniewalter@front-end.social

@stephaniewalter A common technique to analyse processes is the Value Stream Map - very useful for industrial processes. When you apply it to complex work like engineering, you typically find 60-70% of the time between request and shipped code is waiting. Waiting for review, waiting for design sign-offs, waiting for testing, waiting for other features and bugs to get fixed before we package this feature. It's exhausting. And nobody wants to take away process steps, so nothing changes.

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rhempel @rhempel@cosocial.ca · Apr 13, 2026

Replying to @johnlogic@sfba.social

@johnlogic @jasongorman Same here - in fact this will get a couple of slides in my upcoming talk at the Embedded Online Conference in May this year :-)

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