Replying to
Kinda back from my four month social media break. Still keeping it at arms length for now while I sort through ${BrainThings}. But hi. 👋
Remote
Ruben Schade (taking break)
@rubenerd@bsd.network
mastodon 3.5.19+iceage
Hi 👋 I’m a human, blogger, technical writer, IaaS engineer, weeb traveller, urbanist, third-culture kid, profile list enumerator, and retro computator in Sydney, Australia, formerly Singapore. He/them. Friend. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Runs #NetBSD, #FreeBSD, #illumos. Slings #Xen and #QEMU at work. Co-host of #BSDNow!
I am bad at replying; sorry.
1412 Followers
658 Following
34 Posts
Joined December 23, 2018
Weblog:
Lunchbox:
Pardon the French, but fuck I love #NetBSD.
Had a long train ride home, so SSH’d into my Shonen Jump box at home, then into my old Solaris box, then my Pentium 1. It all still works, and it’s wonderful. Wanted to try something, built a little chroot, done. It’s all so predictable and consistent and wonderful.
And… increasingly rare.
Replying to
@oxy@social.bsdlab.au That's good to know! Love the Noctua browns in my rigs.
When I eventually move off AM4 and LGA1151 I might need to ping them about mounting kits.
The SilverStone FLP02 retro beige case has 3 positions for its upper drive sleds, but only ships with 2.
On a whim I emailed and asked if I could buy another one. Within 24 hours they arranged shipment for one, for USD 6.
SilverStone are awesome!
Bagels aren’t stale doughnuts. Doughnuts are under-ripe bagels.
Replying to
@swelljoe@mas.to @exchgr@mastodon.world
Good developers will write good code faster
The evidence doesn't really support this.
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
Replying to
All discrimination makes no sense, but racism is also offensive for being so damn lazy. Ooooooooh this person looks different from me ooooooooh I can’t handle this ooooooooh! Wankers.
I know I've been mentioning @davidgerard@circumstances.run here a lot recently, but his stuff has been super useful.
Pivot to AI comes out every weekday, and succinctly summarises the latest AI guff. Each episode covers one topic, which also makes them easy to share.
@PivotToAI@www.youtube.com
I’ve decided to spend more time talking about and sharing things that are awesome.
FreeBSD is especially awesome for storage and hypervisors.
NetBSD is especially awesome for anything old and small, but can still grow with you.
Xen is especially awesome as a Linux hypervisor.
Tribblix is an awesome illumos OS, not just for those nostalgic for Solaris tooling.
OM System (ne. Olympus) still make especially awesome fun cameras.
Coffee is especially awesome for taste and alertness.
FLAC, turns out, is especially awesome when your ears have been fixed up.
This is a non-exhaustive list.
ZFS helped remove a bunch of code for a client! Only high level, but got his permission to share this morning.
Seeing more European governments announcing plans to switch to Linux over sovereignty concerns.
Curious what distros they'll end up choosing. The news articles and government press releases don't usually say.
Replying to
Two rude emails last night, but got a comment from a gentleman saying he'd retired many years ago, and that he drinks his tea while reading my blog every morning.
This image of a father figure in a dressing gown on his porch in the rural US reading my silly words on his iPad just... fills me with more joy than I care to admit.
(Also, hey look, imposter syndrome! I must have tricked him somehow into reading my stuff).
Replying to
@wezm @isagalaev
It used to really get to me when I lived in Singapore, which doesn't have traditional seasons at all. A lot of those ostensibly in the "Northern Hemisphere" are similar.
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@wezm THIS! How hard would it be to say Q2 2026, or May 2026?
Equinix will now only deal with you directly if you have $50K (IIRC) in additional spend, otherwise they're palming you off to a distibutor.
And the one they've chosen in Australia is... not ideal.
The new Commodore announced the 64C Ultimate, and I'm happy for a whole multitude of reasons, some of which I awkwardly wrote about here.
tl;dr: The 64C was my favourite 64, and something something optimism.
https://www.rubenerd.au/commodore-releases-the-64c-ultimate/
Generative "AI" is like plutonium and PII. There are *extremely* limited cases where its use is appropriate, and misuse carries severe issues. We're far enough along in this bubble where pleading ignorance also doesn't fly.
The way in which people are speed-running Fuck Around and Find Out when it comes to this stuff shouldn't keep surprising me, yet here we are!
--
PII: Personally identifiable information. You can't have a data leak with data you don't hold.
Okay, onto the first call of the day. Stay fabulous everyone 👋
A non-essential tool I use has changed their login process to be far more complicated.
I've mitigated this by making my account login much less secure. Bravo, claps all around!
Morning waves to Monday people in this and similar timezones 👋 . What an awkward sentence.
I'm on my first double espresso of the day. Feels like I'll need it, based on The Calendar.
Update: This espresso is delicious! Wow! What a difference starting the day right makes.
"This Agentic AI tool has made coding cheap!"
Cheap... for whom exactly?
Though I guess "cheap" is also a judgement about quality as well, so touché.
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@dexter@bsd.network And oksh! :')
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@tragivictoria@mastodon.catgirl.cloud @frederic@gts.raspi0.blog @greenpeace@mastodon.social
Yup, perfect example of whataboutism. It's what you do when you don't have any other argument.
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@ostyn@mastodon.social @robotspacer@xoxo.zone Yeah, and I don’t blame anyone for doing so! Notification fatigue is real.
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@HamonWry@mastodon.world Agreed. I didn’t realise how much I’d internalised snark and sarcasm until I took a break from there.
Once you have a taste of people being earnest, it’s hard to look back.
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@tubsta@social.bsdlab.au @joel@gts.tumfatig.net
Interested to read more about your experience. I've been on Fedora since forever, but yeah, RH doesn't instil confidence.
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@wpeckham@social.linux.pizza I'm seeing it everywhere alas, even from people who claim to use it.
https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/code-is-cheap/
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@wpeckham@social.linux.pizza Thanks William :). For what it's worth, your considered insights have been among the highlights of my time here as well, which has been hugely appreciated.
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@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt I only just saw this reposted on my timeline, and it put a grin on my face. Thank you :')