Remote

Rusty Flowers

@trevorflowers@hachyderm.io

mastodon 4.6.6

Oh, hey. I'm Trevor.

Softer, Cheaper, Slower, Smarter

Smol dogs run my life and I'm OK with it.

Trying to leave it better than I found it.

Usually van or boat camping in quiet deserts.

Physically and metaphorically faint of heart.

Praise Dog.

Profile pic: old goof
Profile header: smol dog in fav blanket

0 Followers

0 Following

16 Posts

Joined November 21, 2025

location:

North America-ish

dog friends:

Paris & Helen

dog size:

smol

software:

as FOSS as possible

Posts

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Jun 29, 2026

I don't use streaming music but if I did Tidal would have my business because of their move to eliminate slop fakery and to demonitize the other slop.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · May 09, 2026

Replying to @gvwilson@mastodon.social

@gvwilson@mastodon.social Honestly, with that traffic and data size for that audience I'd be tempted to keep a CSV file per table, read it into memory for a single threaded service, and then write updates to disk as needed.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · May 06, 2026

Replying to @petrillic@hachyderm.io

@petrillic If there's no publicly posted list ordered by priority then there are no priorities EOM

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 30, 2026

Replying to @ErinRose@chaos.social

@ErinRose@chaos.social Yeah! I used a wee phone haptic motor for a wand and it was a big hit with the 6yo crowd.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @MLE_online@social.afront.org

@MLE_online Woot!

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 23, 2026

Replying to @homeassistant@fosstodon.org

@homeassistant@fosstodon.org Oh, wow. A good partnership!

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @ma3ke@hachyderm.io

@ma3ke Ah, yes. The eternal urge to oversample for the crop. Whoopsies!

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @ma3ke@hachyderm.io

@ma3ke I suspect that many people shoot in 2k and up-sample to 4k because very few viewers notice the difference.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 14, 2026

Replying to @petrillic@hachyderm.io

@petrillic Each Alto replica shipment had a $500 fuel surcharge. Winning, indeed.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 03, 2026

I wonder how many teams are reevaluating the risk of hosting services across many small locations run by diverse companies. Hosting in one big building owned by a hypercorp headquartered in an aggressive nation seems increasingly risky.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Apr 01, 2026

Replying to @th@social.v.st

@th My father was a marine biologist on a remote island where he had a card punch but not a computer. So, every few months he'd take his stack of data cards, ride a boat, and then drive several hours to a university so he could run stats with their computer.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Mar 29, 2026

Replying to @th@social.v.st

@th Hmmmm. Maybe I should install one on the roof of my van with a little ramp so my chihuahuas can use it to bark at pedestrians. Or falling leaves. Or the wind. Or anything, really. 😺

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Mar 27, 2026

A remarkably similar story to how I retired early: https://www.focalcurve.com/journal/the-end/
I've heard from a number of older tech folks who find the current web, controlled by Google and bloated with ridiculous tools, distasteful enough to take early retirement by living lower on the hog instead of following their original plans of saving enough to retire without worry. Whether this means anything interesting or whether it will have predictable results, I don't know.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Mar 24, 2026

Eniac was made ~80 years ago.
Research Unix was written ~50 years ago.
TCP/IP was standardized ~45 years ago.
Palm Pilot launched ~30 years ago.
iPhone was announced ~20 years ago.

We are all newbs.

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Feb 22, 2026

The best advice I have for new nerds: Refuse to pay rent.

Don't subscribe. Don't lease. Don't use their cloud. Don't slip down the freemium slope. Don't create accounts on their services.

Buy it once. Run it local. Avoid commercial software.

It'll be a huge pain and you'll be an outsider but it'll be endless, interesting, and hard fun that'll pay you back with a curious mind and an understanding of the fabric of our intellectual infrastructure that will make you light-years more capable, useful, and healthy than the "AI" zombies.

730

Rusty Flowers @trevorflowers@hachyderm.io · Feb 08, 2026

Replying to @macinjosh@oldbytes.space

@macinjosh I haven't written about it but I was at Be around 1998 working as a tester and then browser engineer. I moved on when we stopped working on NetPositive and instead ported Netscape in order to make Internet appliances.

Rusty Flowers

Posts

Remote instance