@fribbledom@mastodon.social Absolutely.
Best debugging tips:
- Take a shower
- Go for a walk
- Eat/drink something healthy (no, sugar won't help)
- Chat with a rubber duck about it
- Chat with a friend/coworker about it
- Take a nap
Replying to
Remote
Paul Armstrong
@psa@masto.ai
mastodon 4.7.2Australian SCUBA educator living on the Great Barrier Reef after working a tech career in Silicon Valley.
I enjoy technical diving for fun as well as cooking (just about anything), reading (non-fiction, science-fiction and fantasy), running, cycling and games (board and computer).
Spent a lot of time working in technical infrastructure: systems administration, SRE, systems engineering, DevOps, whatever you want to call it this week.
99 Followers
120 Following
40 Posts
Joined November 07, 2022
Hobbies:
Diving, cooking, reading, climbing, fitness, programming, travel
Founder:
Diving Preferences:
Sidemount, backplate, technical
Consulting:
Available for IT or SCUBA diving consulting
Replying to
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe Sometimes, it's important to fire the customer.
Don't forget to take detailed contemporaneous notes, just in case they do actually employ a lawyer dumb enough to look at this and decide they can get away with suing you.
Boosted by @ferrix@mastodon.online
Cervical cancer is on track to be eliminated in Australia by 2035. In 2021, there were no cases of cervical cancer in women under 25, an outstanding achievement, and cancer rates continue to be extremely low Australia wide.
Unfortunately, the anti-vaccination trend kicked off by the Trump regime has had an impact in Australia too, with lowered vaccination rates in the last few years.
We are so close to eliminating cervical cancer. Get vaccinated!
https://report.cervicalcancercontrol.org.au/
Replying to
@nini @elizayer @hyc Oh my goodness, the contractors. It's not just the lack of institutional knowledge, it's also that many people don't seem to know how to write technical contracts.
So, we end up with software projects which are unmaintainable in various ways. From not having any monitoring to requiring a large extra payments (and possibly contract adjustments) to make operational changes.
No matter how low your expectations of how bad things are in Azure, prepare to have them reset quite a bit lower: https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporized-a-trillion
This isn't just neglect, it's willful abandonment of basic security and stability standards my senior and middle management. Given the number of major breakins they've had in the last few years, there's little wonder as to what's behind that.
Replying to
@pojntfx@mastodon.social @mitchellh@hachyderm.io I had read some piece from Github talking about how much extra load they were under due to the percent of commits from LLMs. However, reading through https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-availability-report-april-2026/ shows outages largely driven by logic bugs rather than scaling issues.
There's definitely an interesting paper in there somewhere.
Replying to
@82mhz
Ruben's blog and his retro computing section seem to match what you're after: https://rubenerd.com/
Also @rubenerd
Replying to
@pjf@cloudisland.nz This is one of my main concerns with left leaning politics: failure to understand that imperfect allies are still allies.
We can even vehemently disagree about substantive things, but when we work together on the things we agree on then, there's hope for maybe finding understanding in the middle for the things we don't.
Replying to
@averagehousewife Oh yeah, and then some. Then, after getting employed comes the "I used to know how to do this, WTF!?!?!?"
Huge hugs and well wishes. I hope you find a position that's well suited to your new self.
If you use jq a lot (or otherwise work with JSON and YAML), then jless is almost certainly a tool you're interested in https://github.com/PaulJuliusMartinez/jless/
Replying to
@beep @elizayer What do you see as wrong with automated repeatable solutions?
From my perspective (as someone who has been operationally focused his entire career), automated repeatable solutions are the cornerstone of a stable system. Also, it's much more satisfying to build a tool that gets it right every time rather than manually update a field and click a button (potentially making errors) a thousand times.
One of my biggest issues with LLMs is the non-determinism. I want repeatable.
Replying to
@elizayer And, in many cases, the best (or only) way to get a raise or have your pay come close to inflation is to hop jobs.
In many places it's considered good practice to change jobs every 2-4 years just for pay reasons.
RE: @andrewnez@mastodon.social
If you're contemplating OpenClaw, please be very careful about what you give it access to. 2.1 CVEs/day on average is no joke.
If you really need/want to run it, best to sandbox it on separate hardware and a separate network.
Replying to
@argv_minus_one @b0rk_reruns As Julia pointed out in her comic, some people don't understand that DNS may switch to TCP mode if the packet gets too big (or if the client simply chooses it).
Even big networking professionals used to get this wrong. Both Cisco PIX and Firewall 1 permitted only UDP 53 at 512 bytes or smaller for a very long time. They eventually added flags, which defaulted to off, then they eventually fixed it. Took ages though.
Replying to
@marlies Ouch, that sucks. I hope your backups are in good order. And yes, my home stuff also suffers from the shoemakers children problem. 😞
An idea for cheap variance which has saved me before: get different batches. Just buying from different shops or the same shop a month apart is sufficient in my experience.
Replying to
@libramoon@mastodon.social
That's awful. Gives you a very clear picture of how much your friends didn't actually care about you. Being hard rejected when in need is cruel.
I hope you have since made real friends who you could ask for important help from, even if doing so is now somewhat harder emotionally.
Replying to
@notjustbikes Thank you for the delightful stroll through Nantes.
I also really enjoyed the metro system video and agree that metros are an excellent place for public art.
Replying to
@tbh@stranger.social @fribbledom@mastodon.social Yes, of course, before describing it to a friend/coworker, describe it to a rubber duck.
Have edited to add.
Replying to
@SpiritLady @scalzi By being so rich and pervasive that governments don't enforce the laws.
Also, in many (most?) places, as long as it's in public it's fine. If they detect whether it's in a building or not and only pervasively record outside, then they might be on legal high ground.
Replying to
@fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net Right, so trillion dollar company decides that because someone won't provide them a library to support the feature required by the standard for free the standard should change so they can save a trivial amount of money.
And, as a side effect, it lines up podcasting for capture in ways we've seen before when open protocols were muffled.
Replying to
Replying to
@zoozoo @aspensmonster @jwz @claudius @mathowie Unfortunately, for all but die hard users, the UI is the most important part of access. I used to scoff at UI gloss as unimportant too, but got schooled on it through years of interaction with non-technical users.
Replying to
@target I happen to agree, but some people will insist on giving it a whirl just to see what all the fuss is about. They should at least put on a condom before they fuck themselves.
Replying to
@urbanfuzzy@aus.social Nah, it's a loss leader. $30 to install. $300/hr to fix it when it inevitably breaks. $3,000 to uninstall it and put something useful on the disk.
How Australians are feeling about wage theft and other dark business practices:
EGE - I Love Stealing From Woolies (Official Video)
Replying to
@ajft@aus.social This is, unfortunately, the default in Brisbane. Most of the "bike lanes" are "shared" with parking. In practice, this means the only "safe" place to cycle in much of Brisbane is in the centre of the "car" lane.
Replying to
@b0rk_reruns Sigh. I've been having this argument for about 30 years. Don't block TCP port 53! 😠
Also, UDP 53 must allow packets of more than 512 bytes! EDNS0/EDNS(0) is a thing!
Replying to
@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca @wonshu@mastodon.social @hedders@mas.to For those who don't quite get how much an IP was part of identity back then, it was common to see an IP or netblock written on a conference badge.
Replying to
@santi@gone.lema.org @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social Cause if you're going to have mindless use of LLMs screw up anything, your brand should absolutely be at the top of the list...
Replying to
@trib In the NT, diesel hit $3.99/liter pretty much instantly. There are numerous reports throughout Aus of diesel being restricted to farmers, contract customers and emergency vehicles only (and some to only emergency vehicles).
For those interested in Climate Week and reaching netzero in a timely manner, https://luma.com/b5ya948h
Replying to
@Ihazchaos@chaos.social @MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk I can think of a solid example for ticking each and every one of those 😠
Replying to
@lyda@mastodon.ie Ugh, I hear you. People sometimes ask why I continue to engage with the right wing bigots and I have to point out that they have a persuadable audience.
Here's to being able to stop doing this work, for the right reasons.
Replying to
@ravanon@mastodon.scot it's delightful and the idea of multiple orientations for perspective is excellent. Restoring the reflection helps a lot, I didn't originally parse it and the whole image was a bit weird. Having it there provides the necessary orientation.
If you SCUBA, going upside down is a worthwhile activity that too few divers seem to try. Gives a whole different perspective on the undersea world.
Replying to
@mhoye This is extremely astute and thoughtful. Thank you for taking the time, not just to write it up, but to share it with the rest of us.
Replying to
@wonshu@mastodon.social @JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca @hedders@mas.to I recall getting a lot of work early in my career setting up squid proxies (or adding empty entries in BIND) to block doubleclick.net et al.
Replying to
@averagehousewife Which industry are you moving to?
I went from big tech to SCUBA diving (but had to bounce back to tech due to an illness).
Replying to
@chaslinux@techhub.social @Edent@mastodon.social If you're up for self hosting and it meets your other requirements, I've had relatively decent experiences with Mattermost.