“Some assembly required”

… takes one to know one 😇

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Here’s how we fix a society that’s already drowning in advertising … more advertising.

Russell Howcroft would think that this was the Duck’s Nuts!

This whole thing was already played out on the TV series “The West Wing”, and I’m fairly sure that Aaron Sorkin got it from somewhere else.

https://www.tv-quotes.com/shows/the-west-wing/quote_13962.html

Edit: It appears that the original author is Kent Ashcraft:

Source: https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ss44/joke/laura.htm#author

Thank you for supplying your birthday, please upload a copy of three photographic government identification documents.

13 … 14 … 15 … 16 … 17 … 18 … 19

Pretty sure that you’re a teenager for seven years, not five.

This cat is reminding you that every time you smoke a kitten dies.

Catch up on sleep.

I have asked for sources when a post makes an extraordinary claim. It’s rare that I get anything meaningful as a response, but often I learn something or both of us do.

So … it’s not working in that school?

I’m a software developer with over 40 years experience. Much of it with FOSS.

Your argument in relation to GitHub does not take in the reality of the effort involved with migrating to a different platform, effort that is likely unpaid, has no logistical upside and stalls the development efforts of a project, not to mention breaking every single source code repository link across the wider internet, links that represent publicity and community engagement.

It’s one thing migrating after a service vanishes, it’s an entirely different thing to migrate due to the philosophical differences perceived by the ownership change to Microsoft. In my opinion, chanting FOSS is insufficient as an argument.

I have several projects and clients that use GitHub and while I detest copilot and the enshitification that the new ownership represents, I’m also aware that it’s likely that the sale provides financial security to the continued existence of GitHub.

I think it’s admirable that a project is asking its community if it should stay or move and I wish the developer(s) wrestling with this all the strength and patience in the world to work through it.

I know I’ve struggled with the same considerations and I’m still using GitHub … for now.

Docker is not virtualisation, although it’s a common misconception.

A better way to think of it is a security wrapper around untrusted processes.

You can prove this for yourself by looking at all the processes running in a Docker host while one or more containers are running, you’ll see all the processes listed.

In other words, you don’t need a CPU capable of virtualisation to run Docker.

My “smart” phone is rarely used as a telephone. It’s set to silent, all notifications turned off, blocks unknown numbers, transcribes voicemail and spends most of the day as a window to the world.

I’m not sure what, if anything, a “dumb” phone would add to my life, except more interruption, more administration to keep contacts up to date, and yet another device to charge and maintain.

Who can see?

My observation was based on personal experience after noticing that an account blocked me.

As a point of reference, on Bluesky, it appears that if you’re blocked, you cannot see the account that blocked you. Essentially they just disappeared. They’ve not visible in search either.

So, unless you create another account, they ceased to exist.

Just to be clear, as far as I can tell, this invisibility is mutual as soon as one account blocks the other.

Use a bash command line:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6250698/how-to-decode-url-encoded-string-in-shell

It’s like “sugar free” and “green”, meaningless unless it’s regulated, policed and prosecuted.

As others have said, the best labelling system we currently have is the licence that’s attached to the software.

Mind you, that in and of itself is not sufficient, since the source code needs to come with it, and arguably the ability to actually compile it, neither of which are guaranteed, again more requirements for policing and prosecution.

Also, when I say policing, I’m not talking about the law enforcement community, I’m talking about developers and end users paying attention and calling out breaches.

Whilst contemplating all that, this costs money, something that is in very short supply within the wider open source software community and what little there is, goes to pay for food and lodging for a very very very small group of developers.

Fix funding and you can have all the stickers in the world, in the meantime, nope.

So, somewhat disappointedly … no.

Incoming tenders with prompt injection in … Three … Two … One.

At best it’s a way to see the world and experience new things, at worst it’s sex slavery.

I’d be extremely careful, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.