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Rachel Barker

@rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

mastodon 4.7.2+glitch.techlgbt

Software witch, environmentalist, and amateur musician. This is my non-worksona side, where I like to do things from scratch to learn how they work then tell the world about it. Accidentally-on-purpose ended up doing a theoretical physics degree that way.

Professionally, interested in software engineering *as engineering*, caring about correctness, performance, and serving people's needs. Enjoys building tools to make those things easier to achieve.

Blogs at https://www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/

158 Followers

126 Following

27 Posts

Joined February 17, 2025

Website:

https://www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/

Pronouns:

she/her

Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@catsalad@infosec.exchange There's a super promising drug for treating sleeping sickness which got formally approved a few months ago. In trials, it cured almost all cases with a single dose, which is incredible considering the disease is almost always fatal if untreated! (shout out to where I learnt this from: https://wandering.shop/@adapalmer/116307874367742368 )

Quoting

@adapalmer@wandering.shop

‘Truly spectacular’ drug for sleeping sickness simplifies treatment, raising hopes for eradication. European regulators have approved acoziborole, a new treatment for sleeping sickness that cures the disease with a single oral dose. The drug replaces complex regimens requiring hospitalisation, spinal taps and weeks of monitoring, making treatment far easier in remote regions. Experts say the breakthrough could help eliminate the disease this decade. https://www.science.org/content/article/truly-spectacular-drug-sleeping-sickness-simplifies-treatment-raising-hopes-eradication
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Open quoted post

Ada Palmer: "‘Truly spectacular’ drug for sleeping sickness si…" - The Wandering Shop

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Alright Mastodon, I'm looking for work. Senior software developer, specializing in low-level, embedded, and systems programming. Previous work includes video compression (developer on AV1 and AV2), silicon verification, and scientific/numerical software. Full CV/resume available on request. Primarily looking for remote work, but would consider in-person in the UK if the circumstances are right. Available for either contract work through the company I run (easiest route if you're outside the UK), or direct employment. Tagging #FediHire for visibility.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 2mo ago

I did the thing I've been meaning to do for years, finally got the right push to do it:

https://www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/07/moving-off-github/

Moving off Github - Rachel++

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@swope@mstdn.plus @Aaron_DeVries@mastodon.social I once saw a datasheet for an Intel SSD, which basically said it likes being run hot and stored cold, and that combination gave the longest data retention lifetime. Hot/hot, not so much. If I remember correctly, that's because higher temperatures make it easier for electrons to escape from the floating gates. Which is bad for data retention, but as long as the drive is powered on the firmware can handle that by re-writing the data occasionally. But it also means deliberate erasures are easier and cause less physical damage, so the SSD degrades slower if it's run hot. And after enough use, that matters more than the effect of temperature on the durability of any individual write.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 2mo ago

Today's fever-dream thought, brought to you by it being way the fuck too hot:

You know what would be a great name for either a fuzzer or an iocaine-style scraper defence thing? "random-bullshit-go"

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 2mo ago

Well I had plans for the weekend, but then I got nerd-sniped by the sequel to Sudokuvania coming out. So I've been doing that most of the weekend instead :P

It even has a snazzy website now: https://sudokuvania.com/

sudokuvania.com

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 4mo ago

RE: @misty@digipres.club

Things like this seem to be increasingly common, and I've been thinking a lot about how to avoid getting pwned myself, without retreating into "trust nobody, write everything from scratch" because that isn't helpful either.

I've already split my dev work off into its own VM to minimize the escalation surface to my main user account. But I'm considering splitting things further into two user accounts: One which gets everything needed to write code (read-write access to repositories, SSH keys, etc.) and a separate build account which has read-only access to repositories and very little else.

Idea is that a compromised build account shouldn't be able to write anywhere that the code-writing account can exec from, to make it harder to escalate from one to the other

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ska@social.treehouse.systems @bt@mastodon.bsd.cafe Obviously terminating TLS on the server would be ideal, but if that ends up not being viable, I wonder if routing the backhaul over Wireguard would help? That would make sure the server <-> proxy traffic is encrypted, but also wireguard can transparently handle changes of IP address (as long as both ends don't change at the same time!). Which might help if your ISP changes your address on you

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@catsalad@infosec.exchange @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange uses adblock rules to delete the poll

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@reillypascal @xgranade Something I find very funny about that video, is that for the thumbnail they scaled the cost of making antimatter to "$[lots] per gram" Because it makes complete sense, a gram is probably the smallest unit most people have an intuition for. But at the same time, you really, really do not want a gram of antimatter in one place...

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@amenonsen@flipping.rocks I've looked at Qubes before, always seemed interesting but waaaay more complicated than I could deal with for regular usage I suppose what I'm thinking of is an intermediate point between the default of "one user account, everything has access to everything" and full Qubes-style isolation

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@alisonkiddle@mathstodon.xyz Took a different angle to many of the other answers I see - definitely influenced by having worked in data compression! Started thinking about how much entropy the two options are "worth" - more formally, what is -log2(probability) ? A heads on a regular coin flip is "worth" 1 bit of entropy, so ten heads is worth 10 bits. Meanwhile, four sixes on four dice is "worth" 4 * log2(6) bits. But how do we compare those? Well, I know that sqrt(2) is 1.4[something], and in particular is less than 1.5. So 22.5 = 4 * sqrt(2) < 6, meaning log2(6) must be slightly more than 2.5. Which means 4 * log2(6) > 10. Converting back to normal people terms, four sixes being "worth" more entropy means that the outcome is less likely. So 10 heads is slightly more likely than 4 sixes.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@skinnylatte Oh hey, I know where that is! They opened after I moved away from living in that bit of town, so I haven't tried their food before. But if you recommend it I'll have to go one time!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place Looks like you're going to have some neat oxbow lakes soon!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@katemorley If I remember correctly, the grid has the technical ability to go down to zero fossil fuel usage as of last year, but this is the closest I've seen it in practice! Down to <1GW at the moment, compared to >32GW of renewables! (plus about 1GW of net imports, but I don't know if there's a good way to get a breakdown of that by likely production method?)

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@pheonix Good article! One thing I will say is that I don't like the thing where pages have header bars which disappear on scroll-down and reappear on scroll-up. Often I'll scroll a page to put the start of the the paragraph I'm reading right at the top of the screen. But that's almost impossible to do if, instead of just making a small adjustment, the up/down arrow keys also summon/dismiss a giant header bar. Much prefer websites which keep it simple and leave the header at the top of the page, where I can find it if and when I want it.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@xgranade@wandering.shop I can't speak to the actual history, but I always took the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment as more making a philosophical point that the Copenhagen Interpretation, while often a useful framing for designing experiments, cannot be literally true. Which doesn't change the fact that it's often used as "look how ~weird~ and ~incomprehensible~ quantum mechanics is", especially in pop-science presentations, and that has all the problems you mentioned. Think I've seen exactly one pop-sci book that doesn't do that, which was a relief to see.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@gianni@disobey.net Thank you! :) I've got a lot more ideas in my backlog extending what I've posted about already, but unfortunately circumstances have conspired to mean I'm unlikely to get chance to do them justice for a while. But fingers crossed that I can get to them one day!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@jotak@framapiaf.org I'm very much a fan of that style of open source consultancy, will definitely check them out!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space Thank you! :)

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@Taffer@mastodon.gamedev.place Thanks! I will check it out!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

Tell you what else though, it's amazing how much of the spam you get for running a business is people trying to sell you ways to spam everyone else, like some kind of spam ouroboros.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@film_girl I got 0.0043 overall. But the threshold of what delta-E I could see seemed to be different depending on the colours involved. Nailed some all the way down to 0.0032, while others I couldn't distinguish at 0.0080. Whether that's a weirdness of my eyes, or my monitor being badly calibrated, or a bit of both, I couldn't say. [edit to add: or it could be OKLAB not being perfectly perceptually uniform, I suppose. I would suspect it's not quite as uniform as DE2k, but would love to have data to back that up one way or the other]

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@b0rk_reruns (I know this is a rerun of an old comic, but...) since this was written, issue 1 has been fixed: musl’s resolver did not support the use of DNS over TCP until version 1.2.4 (ie, it does support that now) https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc.html#Name-Resolver/DNS

wiki.musl-libc.org

musl libc - Functional differences from glibc

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@solar_chase@mastodon.green I remembered seeing a similar graph on Wikipedia a while ago, so went to have a quick look at what graphs their solar power article currently uses. Turns out their version of this graph only goes up to 2016: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reality_versus_IEA_predictions_-_annual_photovoltaic_additions_2002-2016.png They do also have a more up-to-date breakdown of installations, just without the comparison to earlier predictions. That one puts 2023 as just under 450GW (peak), citing BloombergNEF, which is even higher than the Information is Beautiful graph! Do you know what's going on with that? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2007-_New_solar_installations_-_annually_by_country_or_region.svg

commons.wikimedia.org

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@danielquinn@mastodon.social Thanks, I will have a look at them!

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus@tech.lgbt

· 8mo ago

Replying to on tech.lgbt

For bonus fun, you know how it's mandatory to include an unsubscribe link in marketing emails in many countries? Usually I expect those to be fake in the sense that they actually just confirm your email address is real, meaning you'll get more spam in future if you click it, not less. But the one in this spam email is even more fake than that! It's the bare minimum to display as a link, without actually going anywhere: Unsubscribe

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