@b0rk@social.jvns.ca

Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1w ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

Is there a QR code generator that

is a website
is free, no account needed
is not secretly also a link shortener (no “dynamic QR codes”)
does not look like a scam
does not include extra branding (the way the Chrome one does)

a friend just asked me this and I really could not find one

(edit: many people are recommending https://justaqrcode.com/ which looks great, gonna mute this conversation now)

justaqrcode.com

Just a QR Code

A free QR code generator. No ads, no trackers, nothing to buy.

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2w ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

Are you interested in learning how to use Git for the first time? (or almost the first time) we're looking for Git beginners to give us feedback on a Git tutorial! The tutorial will be open source when it's released, so you'll be helping many future beginners! Sign up here: https://forms.gle/zgubUXvFZKRALefWA (i realize my Mastodon followers are pretty unlikely to be total Git beginners, but I'm putting this out there anyway 🤞)

forms.gle

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

big news about the Wizard Zines store: print orders from Europe now ship from a European warehouse in Germany!!! We've been having a lot of issues with duties & fees for European customers because of shipping from the US so I'm very excited for this. get your zines here: https://wizardzines.com/ (and here's the shipping FAQ with all the details: https://store.wizardzines.com/pages/shipping-policy)

wizard zines

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1w ago

replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/09/27/replacing-the-old-battery-on-rechargeable-bike-lights/

Julia Evans

Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2w ago

poll: in Git, do you ever use any of the references MERGE_HEAD, REBASE_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD, ORIG_HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, or REVERT_HEAD etc? (and if so, what do you use them for?)

poll: in Git, do you ever use any of the references `MERGE_HEAD`, `REBASE_HEAD`, `CHERRY_PICK_HEAD`, `ORIG_HEAD`, `FETCH_HEAD`, or `REVERT_HEAD` etc? (and if so, what do you use them for?)

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1mo ago

if you're dealing with a merge conflict in Git like this, how do you figure out which side the of the conflict comes from which branch? (you can pick more than one) FRUITS = [ "apple", <<<<<<< HEAD "cherry", ======= "banana", >>>>>>> add-fruit "orange", ]

if you're dealing with a merge conflict in Git like this, how do you figure out which side the of the conflict comes from which branch? (you can pick more than one) FRUITS = [ "apple", <<<<<<< HEAD "cherry", ======= "banana", >>>>>>> add-fruit "orange", ]

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

another thing that's fun about working in Python (instead of Go) is that if I want to add a debug print statement deep inside some dependency to see what's going on I can just run vim ./.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/django/db/backends/sqlite3/base.py or whatever and edit it

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1w ago

poll: when you run git pull, do you pass the name of the remote/branch (like git pull origin main) or just git pull?

(you can pick more than one)

poll: when you run `git pull`, do you pass the name of the remote/branch (like `git pull origin main`) or just `git pull`? (you can pick more than one)

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

been making a single-page app with https://pocketbase.io/ this week and it's been a nice experience. I like making single-page JS apps with a Go backend API and this means that I don't have to write the Go backend. Really impressive project given that it's built by one person in their spare time.

pocketbase.io

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

I sometimes wonder if there's an possible future where we can somehow make search _better_ instead of _worse_ with LLM technology, like making it easier to find relevant things that humans wrote and discover new cool people and learn from them instead of hiding everything behind a wall of AI summaries that are often wrong i've been trying duckduckgo and kagi but it has not been a great experience for me (please don't tell me that you can ask generative LLMs to do searches) (2/?)

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

something that's been surprising about Django is that I always heard that if my Python app is slow, it's probably a bad database query. But so far my experience has been that a lot of the time something in my Python code (either in my own code or in Django or a combination) is using too much CPU, and it's useful to do a CPU profile with py-spy to figure out what's going on and fix it https://github.com/benfred/py-spy (3/?)

github.com

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Every so often I consider self-hosting my own website, but I'm feeling more and more like I do not want to do that, I want an organization that I can trust to take care of things so that I do not have to. And enough control and open standards so that if something goes wrong, I can migrate. the idea of doing everything myself so that I don't have to trust anyone to manage it for me just does not feel viable (I am not looking for web hosting suggestions)

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@wingo@mastodon.social i'm trying to think about what Git's official documentation should say about this situation other than "idk it sucks" haha

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @joe@f.duriansoftware.com

I've been trying to improve my French recently and I'm really appreciating this Quebec french dictionary https://usito.usherbrooke.ca/ it's amazing to be able to search for a slang term I hear and find it in the dictionary under (QC, fam), unlike with most French dictionaries which don't have any info about Quebec-specific terms

usito.usherbrooke.ca

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

cool to see that the ICFP programming contest this year is focused on systems programming https://icfpcontest2026.com/ (via @lindsey@recurse.social)

icfpcontest2026.com

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

also have any of you learned how to read sqlite query plans and if so how did you learn?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@grimalkina@mastodon.social i keep talking to "regular people" about password managers and I always get the feeling that folks think they "should" use a password manager or that it's the "right thing" but they have legitimate concerns that haven't been addressed

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 3mo ago

TIL that a) if you're running a process in a VM (like on shared hosting) then the process's CPU can be "stolen" by other processes on the host b) htop can show how much of the CPU is "stolen" with the "Detailed CPU time" setting c) htop has a settings menu if you press "S" https://serverfault.com/questions/180711/what-exactly-do-the-colors-in-htop-status-bars-mean

serverfault.com

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

if you could wave a magic wand and improve one page in the Git documentation, which one would it be?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social I mostly hear about people using VPNs to do bittorrent, I guess the idea being that the VPN provider is headquartered in another country and that the local authorities won't be motivated (or wouldn't be able to?) approach them to find out who is torrenting copyrighted material I don't know if that's "privacy" exactly but it doesn't feel totally unrelated to privacy. maybe I don't know what privacy is!

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@dthompson@toot.cat @cwebber@social.coop oh I remember this now from the one time I tried to use a Lisp! I switched to emacs for a week or something and then switched back haha

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@ripienaar@devco.social i think simon willison's blog https://simonwillison.net/ does a good job of covering the practical perspective though personally I find managing all the various LLM hazards to be very hard and sometimes not worth it and I don't know if I've seen as much about that

Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social using databases at all is new for me and it still feels scary to have data that needs to be backed up. For me using a git repository as a "database" was amazing in the last 5 years I've gotten into sqlite as my first database that I'm starting to be comfortable with and I feel like there's something really special about sqlite for little projects. I sometimes wish there was some kind of web host that offered sqlite as a service that was backed up.

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social i feel like from what i know about unix culture the idea of having to convince a unix nerd to give me space on 'their' server in order to have a webpage sounds kind of awful to me? In the early 2000s I didn't have the skills to make a server like that and I don't think I knew anyone who did i do not always love our corporate overlords but github pages is a way better experience in a lot of ways

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social i've seen some projects that try to bring the magic of static sites to everyone but I don't think I've really seen anything that I'd want to recommend to a friend yet. I'm curious to see what happens with Build Awesome Pro https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/build-awesome-pro

kickstarter.com

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

is there a good website with stats on who owns ipv4 addresses globally? (like which countries have the most IPs?). i know it's sort of a poorly defined question

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@tecteun@mastodon.social I feel like search is much worse now and it's a real struggle

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@penguin42@mastodon.org.uk i don't have any interest in convincing anyone to use LLMs or convincing anyone that it's useful, I think it's cool that many people don't use LLMs and I'd much rather they didn't start if they don't want to

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social what i'm hearing is that the kind of security you need for people who don't trust each other to work together is expensive to provide at a small scale, that makes sense to me! I'm really curious about whether it would be possible to build a smallish shared web hosting service with Firecracker where everyone is totally isolated from each other. I experimented with firecracker a while back and I didn't get that far but it seemed maybe possible. but VMs are not that cheap to run

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social i always find it confusing when people talk about the past because I was a much younger programmer then, and I could not figure out how to make websites more complex than a basic html page, so I don't really have positive associations with it a few questions: re 'throw it on the university file server' - is the idea that you could keep using the university file server even after you left the university? indefinitely?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@penguin42@mastodon.org.uk personally I sometimes see LLM use that the LLM user says is fine but that does not feel fine to me (like it's not something I would be comfortable doing) and also sometimes I use an LLM in a way that I think is fine but then it turns out to not be as ok as I thought I'm not shouting at anyone about it but I guess I understand the skepticism and I feel like we don't have a good shared understanding of what it means to "take care"

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social a couple of community organizations near me have static sites hosted on github pages (https://www.contramontreal.org/ https://radiosnack.ca/) and it has been bothering me that such a great free way of running a website is only really available to you if you're a programmer (both of the sites are built by programmers)

contramontreal.org

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@cwebber@social.coop why do you need emacs to work on spritely tech?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@bradr@infosec.exchange what version of Git are you on? when I run git help I see something totally different which is a bit closer to what you described:

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social yeah I agree, I'd be happy with just a backup every few hours and I find it simpler to reason about. Someone told me recently about sqlite3_rsync which I might still try https://sqlite.org/rsync.html

sqlite.org

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social yeah it's interesting! it bothers me that turso cloud is sqlite over the network though, like I just don't understand the point of it. My latest stab at this is to use litestream for backing up sqlite.

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social yeah it sounds fun but i guess I feel like if I didn’t have access to that kind of environment (as a CS major at a major canadian university who used linux and had the root password to multiple linux machines on campus) it just feels like I can’t imagine it would be accessible to anyone except a very small minority of people

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@kaced@infosec.exchange it's super interesting to hear Kagi is working well for you, I've been using it for a year and I find especially its local search is incredibly bad, like I'll search for a restaurant and it'll be literally impossible to find the restaurant's website in the Kagi search results, like it won't appear anywhere in the first 2 pages of results. More and more I find myself just going to Google because I can't find stuff with Kagi which is disappointing

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@emilsit@discuss.systems with Kagi i find that its local search is extremely bad, like if I search for the name of a restaurant it sometimes doesn't list the restaurant's website or instagram or anything at all in the first 2 pages at all, only like random newspaper articles about the restaurant i end up having to switch to google to find things more than I would like

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@pjg1@mastodon.social yeah I've thought about this before and I think there's something so cool about this idea?? like it might be incredibly chaotic but it would be super interesting if we could have access to all the code questions people are asking LLMs and whether they thought the answer was useful, and be able to use that data ourselves instead of it being locked up in the AI companies

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@mala@fosstodon.org i do it and have mixed feelings about it and i’m curious about what approaches other than variations on RAG are out there

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@magsol@quinnwitz.house i do like some things about it, like it's cool that you can "pin" your favourite domains to the top of the search results

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@paulehoffman@infosec.exchange https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/116688821644574602

social.jvns.ca

Julia Evans: "@emilsit@discuss.systems with Kagi i find that it…" - Mastodon

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social re HTTP Basic Auth - were people actually using HTTP Basic Auth in a serious way for access control? When was this? Was there an intention at some point that http basic auth become the "main" auth system people use? It feels hard for me to imagine.

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@ancoghlan@mastodon.social do you mean because the information the LLM is trained on doesn't apply so the LLM is very often wrong?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aredridel@kolektiva.social re authoring HTML pages - I don't really understand what you mean when you talk about tools to make HTML pages that aren't "writing code". Do you mean like with frontpage and dreamweaver?

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Julia Evans @b0rk@social.jvns.ca

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@sigkill@mastodon.social interesting, what kind of things have you had a robot make you a tutorial for? do you find it works well for you?

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